The Search (21 page)

     “It’s funny how it still has the ‘new car’ smell, even after all these years,” Rusty observed.

     “Yeah,” Mark agreed. “I like it. After it wears off, let’s take it back to the lot and trade it in on one of the forty others still there.”

     Then Rusty turned serious.

     “Mark… what do you think happened to her?”

     Mark hesitated, then chose his words carefully.

     “I’ll give you my opinion if you’ll keep it to yourself. Bryan’s having a hard enough time coping as it is.”

     “Of course.”

     “I know that Bryan is convinced she’s still in the woods. At least he can’t bring himself to leave the woods and abandon her just in case she’s still out there. And I admire him for doing so.”

     “But…”

     “But, I think he’s wrong. All the signs say she left the woods with someone else. The blood drops stopped at the roadway where the dog lost her scent. That can’t be a coincidence. So far Bryan hasn’t found a single drop of blood beyond the roadway, or any sign that she’d gone past that point.

     “So I subscribe to the theory that someone picked her up.

     “But… and don’t you tell anyone else this… but I don’t think she survived.”

     “Really? I was thinking the same thing. But I didn’t want to say it out loud.”

     “I think many of the other searchers are thinking the same thing. That a Good Samaritan picked her up and either took her somewhere for treatment, or treated her themselves. And she was too badly injured. And maybe she died, and hopefully they gave her a Christian burial and prayed over her.

     “But because of the way the world is today, so many of the survivors have isolated themselves and are afraid of other people. It may be that they don’t have access to a ham radio, and never see anyone else to hear of her because they never leave their ranch or farmhouse. They spend all their time hunting and growing their crops, and haven’t come forward to offer information about Sarah because they haven’t heard she’s missing.”

     “That’s pretty much the same thing I’ve been thinking lately, and it breaks my heart that we may never find out what happened to her.”

     “There’s only one thing that keeps my hope alive.”

     “What’s that?”

     “The other possibility. That someone found her and took her home, either because they didn’t know of any doctors or clinics out there, or were afraid to take her into town. So they took her home to nurse her back to health, and then will bring her home when she’s able to travel.”

     “I sure hope that’s the case.”

     “Yes. I think it’s a good possibility, and we can’t give up on that until we visit every single ranch house and farmhouse we can find.”

     “But how far out do we go? I mean, before the world went cold hunters came from two hundred miles in every direction to hunt in those woods. What if they still do so out of habit, or because they had good luck there? That’s a hell of a lot of ground to cover.”

     “Sure it is. But she’s worth it, and if we can find her and bring her home alive it’s worth the effort no matter how far we have to go. So we search all of Kerr County and then expand the search to surrounding counties.

     “And we keep searching until we find her, or until we find someone who says they tried to save her but had to bury her instead.”

     It was slow going. The road they were on was rutted and worn from heavy rains the previous spring. This stretch was on a thirty degree incline, as they progressed toward an expansive ranch house built on a hill overlooking the Lower Llano River.

     “I’ve always wanted to go inside this house,” Rusty said. “You can see it for miles. The word I heard is that a pro football player retired and built his mansion on the hill, so he could look out at the Texas hill country every morning when he had his coffee.”

     “Well, I don’t know who lives here. But they must have a hell of a time going anywhere, unless it’s on horseback.”

     They rounded a bend and came to a dead stop.

     Posted on a sign in front of them, in the center of the roadway, were the words.

NO TRESPASSING

IF YOU NEED HELP,

WE’LL TRY TO HELP YOU.

IT’S THE TEXAS WAY.

BUT IF YOU COME TO DO US HARM

YOU’D BEST SAY YOUR PRAYERS NOW.

BECAUSE YOU WON’T LEAVE

THIS PLACE ALIVE.

     It wasn’t the first warning sign they’d encountered.

     They were quite common, in fact. Most were weather-beaten and faded now, dating back to the days when it was common for bands of marauders to go from house to house, raping and pillaging as they went.

     The world was a safer place now, since most of the marauders had been shot or had retired. But the ranchers and farmers in the area still remembered those days.

     And most of them were still suspicious of uninvited strangers.

Chapter 41

     Mark put the Land Rover into park and set the parking break.

     “We’d better hoof it from here on out.”

     Mark was new to the process, but the searchers who’d been looking for Sarah since the beginning shared what they’d learned with him.

     The survivors of Kerr County saw an incoming vehicle as a serious threat, and often subscribed to the Wild West mentality of “shoot first and ask questions later.”

     Men on horseback were considered less of a threat, since the residents could clearly see their hands and had plenty of time to react if the riders went for a gun.

     Men on foot were the least threat of all.

     Especially when they were unarmed and held their hands out as they approached to prove it.

     It was rather unnerving, the first few times he’d done it, for Mark to walk onto someone else’s property with no way to defend himself. Especially when he knew that at least one, and possibly several, loaded weapons were aimed at various parts of his body.

     All it would take would be one itchy trigger finger to send him to meet his maker.

     Unfortunately, there was no other way to do a thorough search for Sarah, than to contact the reclusive survivors on their own turf.

     And after they’d done it several times, Mark began to relax a bit.

     Sure, the potential was there for him to be shot accidentally.

     But the survivors as a whole weren’t mean or vindictive. They were for the most part good people just intent on protecting what was theirs. It was how they’d managed to survive the meteorite and its aftermath. And they’d continue to protect their families and their land until their dying breaths.

     Most of the survivors were good Christian people, stuck in a newly harsh world. They were cautious and suspicious not because they wanted to be, but because they had to be. But they were Texans at heart, and as Texans still wanted more than anything to be civil and welcoming.

     Whenever possible.

     Mark and Rusty left their weapons in the car and walked the quarter mile to the ranch house.

     They were careful not to go too close. To do so, they might appear to be trying to sneak up on the residents.

     And good guys didn’t use sneaky tactics.

     Instead, they stopped fifty yards in front of the house.

     Mark was positive they were being watched.

     Most of the survivors had gotten quite good at spotting outsiders long before they themselves were seen.

     After they’d stopped, Mark called out, “Hello in the house! We are unarmed and mean you no harm.”

     An unseen man’s voice came from somewhere inside the house. All the front windows were opened but covered with black screens, and it was difficult for Mark to tell which window the voice was coming from.

     That was by design, Mark was sure.

     The voice said, “State your business.”

     “My name is Mark. My friend here is Rusty. We are looking for a woman. Her name is Sarah. She was injured and lost in the woods near here, and we have reason to believe she was taken in by someone and is being cared for by them.”

     There was a pause for about fifteen seconds.

     Then the voice responded.

     “We haven’t seen her. We don’t leave the property, not ever. If she comes to us, we will help her until she is well enough to travel, and will give her provisions for her journey back home. But that’s all the help you can expect from us.”

     That was good enough for Mark.

     He really had no choice.

     “Thank you for your kindness.”

     He and Rusty turned to leave, but the voice stopped them.

     “Do you men need water? Or food?”

     Mark turned around to face the house again.

     “No thank you, sir. We have both.”

     “Good luck. I hope you find her.”

Chapter 42

     A few miles away, Brad and David weren’t quite so lucky, in that the man they were conversing with wasn’t as accommodating.

     Matt Hancock had gone out alone the day after Saris 7 hit the earth. He’d been warned on the news for several days it was coming, so the darkened skies and rapid drop in temperatures were no surprise to him.

     Like everyone else on earth, Matt had been struggling, trying to figure out how he and his family of five could survive a seven year winter.

     He and his wife Sharla had hatched a plan.

     “We’ll have plenty of water,” he’d reasoned. A seven year winter means plenty of snow. We can collect it off the ground and boil it to make it safe to drink. The food will be the problem.”

     “How will we deal with that?”

     “I’m going into the forest. Now that the temperature has dropped below freezing, I can shoot several deer and hide them in the forest. I’ll gut them on the spot and let them freeze. I’ll cover them with pine boughs so only I can find them later on. And I can periodically go back and hack off a section of meat with an axe to bring home to thaw.”

     “What about the cattle and pigs in the fields?”

     “They’ve got hay and feed to eat. That’ll keep them alive until I return. Then I’ll kill them the same way and leave them in the fields to freeze. If I can take three or four deer, combined with our six head of cattle and ten pigs, we should have enough meat to survive until the thaw.”

     It had been a pretty good plan, on the face of it.

     Matt had bundled up and spent six days in the woods. He’d taken two good sized bucks and four does. He’d hidden them well, and was confident that only he could find them when the time was right. When he needed more meat to feed his wife and kids.

     On his way back, he was confident that he’d performed well and done the best thing for his family.

     Then he saw the front door of his ranch house, kicked open and hanging pitifully from one hinge.

     The ranch house was a shambles, with overturned furniture and the contents of drawers dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

     He’d found the children, in an upstairs bedroom, huddled together in an effort to protect themselves against the evil that had invaded their home.

     Matt hoped that they’d all died quickly and without pain.

     He’d picked up his baby, Missie, a month shy of her second birthday.

     He’d cradled her lifeless body in his arms and cried for what seemed like hours before he was able to bring himself to lay her gently upon the bed and cover her with a blanket.

     It just didn’t seem proper to return her to the cold hard floor.

     Matt had dreaded going into the bedroom, for he knew instinctively he’d find Sharla there. And he did, although it was much worse than he’d expected. She looked like she’d put up a good fight, and he was proud of her for that. But in the end she’d been outnumbered and overpowered, and her poor body paid a brutal price for the resistance she’d put forth.

     They’d done unspeakable things to her, and he tried not to think about what she’d endured. For her, death was a merciful gift, and he hoped it had come sooner than later.

     Adding insult to injury was the fact that he couldn’t even bury them. The ground by that time had frozen solid and was hard as granite. Even his heavy pick-ax kicked up no more than a few shards of dirt and ice.

     So he did the next best thing.

     He’d cleaned each of them up as best he could, although even that was an agonizing task. He wrapped each of them in white sheets, wanting them to be properly dressed when they arrived at the pearly gates.

     And then he laid them gently on the ground under the big oak tree in the back yard, covering them first with heavy comforters to keep them warm during the long cold winter.

     Then by dozens of stones from Sharla’s garden, which he very tenderly placed upon them. Even though he knew they were beyond pain, he still hated placing the heavy stones upon their bodies.

     The weeks that followed were the worst of Matt’s life. He couldn’t eat, and he slept no more than an hour or two at a stretch.

     Then Sidney, his middle child, came to him in a vision.

     “You have to go on living, Daddy. Please don’t give up. It saddens us to see you wasting away like you are.”

     It was at that moment that Matt began his recovery. He decided then to rejoin the living. The pain would never go away. And for the rest of his life he would look at every man he saw and wonder… is this one of
them?

     But little Sidney was right. Like it or not, he’d been left behind on a cold and cruel earth. And his belief in God was such that he could not, would not, commit suicide to be with his family.

     “I don’t know why you took them, Lord. I’m sure you had your reasons. I desperately want to join them, but I won’t rush it. Instead, I will be a good man and a good Christian. I’ll work hard to pass this test. And to earn my place to heaven so I can see my angels once more.”

     Matt had kept his promise. He never strayed from the path of righteousness. He seldom saw people anymore, but he made a point to never wrong anyone, ever again. He hadn’t been a perfect man before his family was wiped out. But he tried his best to be one now.

     That wasn’t to say he wasn’t still a bitter and angry man. The anger never left his heart.

     And it was the anger that drove his suspicious mind.

     After all the years that had gone by, he regarded every man he met with suspicion.

     Like the two before him, for example.

     Were they really looking for a woman, the wife of a good friend?

     Or were they two of the men who’d brutalized his wife and children before? Perhaps coming back to see if there were new victims in the house.

     “I am a Christian man,” he said to Brad and David. “That’s why I didn’t shoot you when you came onto my property without permission. And because I am a Christian man, I will let you leave without harm.

     “But I will give you this warning. If you set foot on my property again I will consider you a threat. And I will shoot you dead. With God above as my witness I will promise you that.”

     David said, “Very well, sir. We will leave your land and will not return. But please, be kind enough to tell us whether you have seen the woman we’ve been looking for.”

     “No, I have not. God knows that to be the truth. And don’t bother leaving your names, because I no longer trust any man.

     “Instead, I’ll tell you this. As I said, I am a man of God. If your woman comes here, or if I come across her elsewhere, I will protect her and will do whatever I can to help her heal. Once healed, I will leave it up to her to tell me where she wants to go, and I will take her there myself.

     “I do not know you. You may be who you claim to be. But you could just as easily be part of the evil that has befallen this earth. You could be bad men who are searching for an escaped captive. And if that’s the case, you can expect no help from me.

     “If I come upon this woman you call Sarah, I will tend to her and then take her where she wants to be, and I will protect her while she is in my charge. Expect no more of me than that, for that’s all I will promise you.”

     David was satisfied.

     “That’s fair enough, and we thank you, sir.”

     As he and Brad turned and walked away, David said to Brad in a lower voice, “I can only imagine the horror that poor soul has been through to put him in such a state of mind. But I hope he finds his own peace someday.”

Chapter 43

     Sarah considered herself lucky in a way.

     She’d managed to get through four consecutive days without pissing Nathan off, and he finally decided she’d had enough punishment.

     At least that’s what he told her.

     The truth was, he wanted her to satisfy his own needs and couldn’t have cared less about her comfort.

     But she was in a sorry state after lying in her own waste for so long.

     He made a big show of holding his breath as he walked into the room to unlock the cuffs.

     “It smells like a damn cesspool in here,” he proclaimed before quickly unlocking the cuff which held her to the bedpost.

     Then he quickly retreated to the relatively fresh air of the doorway, before barking orders at her.

     “Get this mess cleaned up and then clean yourself up. Then come downstairs. I’m tired of cooking for the two of us. That’s your damn job, not mine.”

     And it
was
her job. She’d decided, as she lay there wallowing around in her disgusting muck, that it was better to be abused than to be dead. And escape was not an option. He’d done a pretty good job of convincing her that she was the safest under his care.

     Such as it was.

     She decided she would accept his abuse as her lot in life and try her best to do as she was told. She’d go out of her way to pamper him and agree with him, even when he was wrong.

     Because she knew that to anger him would be to place her life in danger.

     Or at least would make her extremely uncomfortable.

     His entire body ached as she stepped onto the floor. Her muscles had already started to atrophy, and screamed in agony at the mere suggestion she’d dare try to use them again.

     She looked in the mirror above the dresser and noticed that the black of her face had faded into an ugly brown.

     At least she could open both eyes now.

     She opened both bedroom windows. They were on opposite walls, and a gentle breeze immediately started wafting through the room. It was the first fresh air she’d smelled in days, and it helped.

     Then she went to the bathroom and removed two hand towels from the towel closet. She used them to soak up what she could from the bed, and then rinsed the towels out in the toilet.

     She took two others and dampened them, then wiped down the plastic atop the bed with a bottle of Pine-Sol she’d found beneath the bathroom sink.

     When she was finished, she stepped into the shower and washed the filth from her body. She remembered to shave her entire body, save her head and eyebrows, because that was the way Nathan preferred it.

     And she was all about pleasing Nathan.

     Because it beat dying.

     When she stepped out of the shower and back into the bedroom, the horrible stench had gone.

     But just to be safe she went to the dresser, where she found a spray bottle of Avondale perfume.

     That was odd. For some reason, she had the sense that she abhorred Avondale perfume. Simply hated it with a passion. She couldn’t say why exactly she knew that. She just… sensed it, for lack of a better word.

     She sprayed one puff into the air and sniffed it.

     And it confirmed her suspicions. It smelled absolutely terrible. Not as bad as the stench of her bodily fluids, but not far behind it.

     That made her wonder, just for a moment. Why on earth would the only perfume on her dresser be a perfume she despised? It made no sense.

     Had she been more clear-headed, she might have wondered if perhaps this wasn’t her bedroom at all, but a bedroom belonging to another woman. Perhaps it wasn’t her perfume, but somebody else’s.

     And if that were the case, what else might Nathan be lying to her about?

     Was his name even Nathan? And was hers Becky?

     She stopped herself before she asked herself such questions. For Nathan was waiting downstairs for her to start his dinner.

     And she couldn’t afford to make him angry. Not again.