Barren Waters - The Complete Novel: (A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival) Page 8

  The man, apparently known as Sturgeon, returned his piercing gaze to Jeremy. “I asked you a question. The supply room. The ark. Where is it?”

  Jeremy’s eyes darted to Doctor Jack. The ark? Dear God, the good doctor had ratted them out. The traitorous Judas had betrayed a family of three to save his own hide. It was disgusting. Jeremy lifted his shoulders and inhaled deeply, and with a nod of his head motioned toward the length of hallway that led to his precious ark.

  “Down the end of that hall.”

  The words dripped from his lips like stinging acid.

  Immediately the second man moved to take Sturgeon’s place and the larger man disappeared down the hall. Shit, Jeremy cursed inwardly. The door was locked. Although he didn’t want them to see what was behind it, but he didn’t want to appear unhelpful either.

  As expected, Sturgeon reappeared within seconds. “Forget to mention something?”

  Unexpectedly he backhanded Jeremy with the butt of his gun, connecting painfully with his lower jaw. His eyes, narrowed slits of anger, beheld Jeremy with disdain. “Don’t fuck with me. Give me the key.”

  The coppery taste of blood flooded Jeremy’s mouth and sharpened his thoughts. His mind raced and he sensed a slim opportunity. He remembered the cart at the edge of the forest and began to grasp at the edges of a plan. There was no way these men were going to let him keep the cabin. Not after they saw what was inside the ark. He and his family would be turned out or they’d be killed. He needed to appeal to this man’s sympathies if any existed. Jeremy seized the tenuous thread of opportunity and pulled tight.

  “Sir, if you let my wife and I go –“

  “The key,” the man pressed as he waived his gun menacingly. “Right now all I want to talk about is where you’ve got that key.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Yes. And I’ll tell you. But first, let’s talk about your plans. I only ask that you let my wife leave the cabin. She can’t possibly–“

  In a rush of movement the man advanced two strides, raised his gun, and squeezed the trigger. The loud report echoed and bounced between the wood beams that crossed the vaulted ceiling, but failed to drown the ragged scream that erupted from Jeremy’s daughter’s throat. Strange images danced before Jeremy’s eyes as he inspected the position of the gun in the man’s hand. He’d expected to feel a searing pain in his body, yet curiously he felt nothing. Detached, he followed the line of the gun’s barrel, the acrid smell of gunpowder lifting to his nose. The trajectory was off. Had it only been a warning shot? It hadn’t been pointed at Jeremy at all. It’d been pointed toward his left.

  It was almost as if his neck was trying to spare him the pain of what he already knew to be true, yet still he forced his head to turn. There she sat, clutching tight to her gut, blood oozing over her fingers and splashing onto the legs of one of the many pairs of khaki pants she’d inherited from her mother-in-law. His voice failed him as his eyes traveled over her body. Her eyes were scrunched in pain, her breathing rapid and shallow. Jeremy had never been shot, but he knew that a bullet to the stomach was an excruciating death. Death? No. He shook his head forcefully. She wouldn’t die. This wasn’t over yet. He propelled himself into motion and fumbled at his pocket, and the barrel of the gun ominously swung back toward his head.

  “No,” he called out breathlessly. “Don’t shoot. The key. It’s right here. I have it in my pocket. Please. I have the key right here.”

  The man called ‘Sturgeon’ of all things, allowed Jeremy to pull the ring of keys from his pocket and select the one with the blue plastic covering over the handle. He held the precious key out to the gunman with a trembling hand as the third man pulled Sam from her hiding place.

  Jeremy heard himself speak, though his words sounded strangely hollow, and the third man pushed his daughter into her chair.

  “Sam,” he murmured miserably.

  Her face had gone ghostly white, her mouth hung slightly agape as she stared at her mother’s sallow complexion.

  “I’m okay baby,” Susan managed through clenched teeth. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  As Sturgeon motioned for his partner to follow him to the ark, Jeremy sat stupidly and stared at his ailing wife. He winced as he heard the key rattle in the lock followed by the sound of the door creak open on its hinges. This would be it. The end. The three of them would be thrust out into the night with no supplies and no place to go.

  He heard the men’s voices gasp in unison as they gazed upon row after row of abundant sustenance. The man guarding Doctor Jack craned his neck and called out to his accomplices. He edged farther from the doctor.

  “What is it? Sturg? Cuda? What do you see?”

  Cuda? Jeremy thought. As in ‘Barracuda’? Had these men chosen to name themselves after fish?

  Jeremy caught a twitching of fingers from the corner of his eye and slowly moved his gaze to Doctor Jack. The man met his eyes and gave a sharp nod before he unexpectedly lunged for the gunman. With more grace than Jeremy had thought possible for a man his size, the doctor caught the slim intruder by the back of his shirt and spun him to the ground. Jeremy quickly followed suit, pushed himself from the cushions and dropped to his knees. He rolled onto the attacker and clamped a firm hand across the man’s mouth as Jack wrestled the gun from his fist.

  To the doctor, Jeremy whispered low and fierce. “No.” Fist trembling, the frightened man held the gun’s barrel level with the intruder’s forehead as a tear tracked the side of his face. “No Jack! Don’t fire it! The others don’t know yet. They haven’t heard.”

  Jeremy struggled to keep his hands from the intruder’s gnashing teeth by bracing the man’s head between his knees and holding firm like a vise.

  “Strangle him,” Jack urged as he peered nervously over his shoulder. “Do it now.”

  Strangle? Jeremy swung his head and met his wife’s gaze. She looked terrible. Her rosy skin had gone gray. Cold sweat dotted her forehead and she trembled with unconcealed agony. She’d lost a lot of blood. It pooled around her now and ran over the side of the sofa in a ghastly red ribbon. She wouldn’t make it. He knew. Yet still he wouldn’t face it.

  “Susan?” he whispered. Desperately he needed her approval. Should he kill this man? This man who’d burst into their home and effectively stolen their very lives? Should he kill him in front of his daughter and with his very own hands?

  Briefly she opened her eyes and nodded. “Kill him,” she breathed. “Kill him now.”

  Jeremy’s eyes slid to Sam and lingered momentarily on her stricken face. Her hands were balled into fists, her eyes fixed upon her mother, and strangely she’d not yet shed a single tear. He tore his gaze from her and peered at the man between his legs. He was only dimly aware of the blood that rushed in his ears and the painful throb of the small heartbeat at the side of his bruised jaw as he closed his hands around the man’s neck. The robber’s eyes grew wide and met Jeremy’s own, and he began to struggle. The struggling was intense, but the doctor held his legs and feet firm, and when the kicking and grappling reached a pinnacle, the doctor threw himself over the man’s legs. He held him fast, pinned his body to the floor in an effort to stifle the sounds of battle.

  Jeremy was surprised at the length of time it took to suffocate a man. He would have thought it mere minutes, but it seemed much longer. And it was difficult too; the tension one must keep in the fingers, the tautness and rigidity of the corded muscles of the human neck that strained and rebelled at the offending pressure. Jeremy worried that it would take an eternity, and his pulse raced as he lifted his gaze to the opening of the hallway. Moment after agonizing moment passed, and he was certain the men would return and catch him in the act before the job was done. But they didn’t. And he did get the job done.

  The man’s efforts suddenly waned and then ceased altogether, and Doctor Jack lifted the pressure on his legs and kneed his way over to Jeremy to peer into the man’s face. Jack held two fingers over the man’s neck and bent to listen for breath. He raised
his gaze and shook his head.

  “We need a knife,” he whispered fiercely.

  Jeremy’s heart skipped a beat. “A knife? Isn’t he dead?”

  The Doctor shook his head vehemently. “One can come back from this if the windpipe isn’t ruptured. A knife. Now.”

  Jeremy fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife. “This is all I have.”

  The doctor snatched it from his open palm and flicked open the two-inch blade before any more words could be spoken. It looked ridiculously ineffective, the tiny blade moving close to the side of the man’s neck, clutched tight in a bearish fist. What the hell was he going to do with that? Before Jeremy had even finished the thought, Jack had set the blade to the man’s throat and sliced open an artery in one smooth stroke. Thick, syrupy blood splashed onto the floor and pooled at Jeremy’s knees. Shocked, he pushed against the gorge that had risen in his throat, dropped the man’s head, and scuttled backward like a crab just as the other two men were stepping from the hallway.

  Sturgeon’s hawk-like gaze surveyed the carnage and Jeremy felt suddenly rooted to the floor, his back against a chair. What now? His thoughts seemed somehow scattered, his vision bright and serrated as the precarious moment hung in the air. It was so difficult to claim purchase to coherent thought. Time seemed frozen, suspended as each man appraised his options.

  Doctor Jack moved first. He lunged across the floor, propelling himself toward the gun that lay at the entrance to the kitchen. Of course! Jeremy thought wildly. The gun! While Jack crawled for the one Susan had dropped, Jeremy pitched himself forward toward the one that lay hidden beneath the sofa. Jeremy had hidden guns of all shapes and sizes at various locations around the house, yet another piece of advice his father had thought to bestow upon them. He thrust his arm beneath the base of the couch and fumbled for the weapon amid clumps of dust bunnies, used Kleenex, and scattered coins. A shot fired as his grip closed around the barrel of the FN Herstal and he froze. No. Not another. Susan again? Sam this time?

  Without thinking he pushed himself to his feet and raised the gun out in front of him. Doctor Jack had been shot in the back of the thigh yet had managed to drag himself to the gun nonetheless. He now had it trained on the men at the door.

  Sturgeon dared a step forward and Jeremy fired a warning shot into the wood planking behind his head. “Not another step,” he growled dangerously.

  Sturgeon leveled his gun on Jeremy and the two locked gazes. “Now what?” the man said in a voice that rankled Jeremy with its calmness. “It seems we’re at an impasse. Gun for gun, man for man?”

  “Seems so,” Jeremy spit between clenched teeth. “I’ll ask once. Get out of my house.”

  The man shook his head, his tone dangerously soft. “You know that’s not going to happen Jeremy. This is my house now.”

  Doctor Jack crawled closer to Jeremy’s side, his eyes fixed on the barrel of Sturgeon’s gun. “Let them go,” he commanded of both Sturgeon and Barracuda. “I shouldn’t have led you here. I was wrong. Should’ve just let you kill me instead.”

  Sturgeon eyed the dark pool of blood that had accumulated at the man’s feet. “Oh I think we’ve successfully done that.”

  Jeremy found his voice though his heart broke even as he said the words. There was no way out of this. The doctor was as good as dead. Susan was as good as dead. And what strategic offense could he wage with a twelve-year-old girl at his hip?

  “All right,” he acquiesced, his grip tight on the gun, “The house is yours along with everything in it. I ask only that you let my family and I leave. It’s a fair price to pay for what you’ve done.”

  Barracuda spoke for the first time, his eyes crawling over Susan’s curled form. “Let 'em go Sturg. They won’t make it out there. Not long anyway.”

  Sturgeon seemed to consider his words and let his gaze travel over Susan. He looked upon her with disgust, almost as if he were imagining the manual labor that awaited him when she did eventually die. “Get out of here,” he breathed. “Now. Before I change my mind.”

  “Get the girls, Jeremy. I’ve got this,” the doctor rasped.

  Jeremy backed a few steps then moved quickly to his wife. Though he kept the muzzle trained on the two men, he shifted his gaze to her face. At some point Sam must’ve broken through her trance. She now sat with her mother’s head cradled in her lap, tears streaming down her face though she didn’t make a sound. Jeremy glanced at Jack who nodded a wordless permission to disengage, and so he crouched low and folded his wife’s clammy hand in his own.

  “You ready Suse?” he whispered softly. “You can do this. Let’s go.”

  His wife’s chin quivered and tears pooled in her eyes. “I can’t, Jeremy. You know I can’t.”

  “Mom,” Sam choked. “We have to go. You need to get up now.”

  Susan let her gaze settle and focus on her daughter, lifted a trembling hand, and laid it across her cheek. For the first time, Jeremy noticed the thin trickle of blood that had spilled over the corner of her lips.

  “Go on honey,” she breathed. “Go with Daddy. I love you so much, but right now you need to go.”

  Sam shook her head violently, and hiccupped through a ragged sob. “No. We’re not leaving without you. The Doctor can make you better. Like he made me better.” Jeremy’s heart broke anew as he watched his daughter stand and pull on her mother’s arm, her eyes darting between her face and the wound on her stomach. “Get up, Mom,” she sobbed. “We’re not leaving you here.” Her accusing eyes darted to Jeremy and dared him to disagree. “Right, Dad? We’re not. Please get her up. Please, Mom. Get up.” She knelt and placed her hand over her mother’s stomach, then sobbing, bent and began re-tying her shoes and pulling up her socks.

  Jeremy grasped her shoulders, though at first she refused to be pulled from her task. “Sam,” he said softly. He gathered her into his arms and cradled her head against his chest, a gesture he hadn’t done since she was much younger.

  “I’m waiting,” Sturgeon said softly.

  Jeremy’s eyes flashed angrily toward the man who had murdered his wife. “We’re going,” he snarled. He lifted Sam’s chin, and with his thumb, wiped a smudge of blood from her cheek. “We have to go Sam. I’m sorry, baby. I know it’s difficult to understand.”

  Holding up his child as best he could, he bent to kiss his wife’s trembling lips. This couldn’t be happening. Was he leaving Susan behind? Was he really doing this?

  “Susan,” he gasped. “There’s never been another and there never will be. It’s always been you.” He touched his forehead to hers. “If the world suddenly came to an end and I were stuck on a deserted island, I’d only want you by my side.”

  She smiled at the familiar catch phrase, a joke that had become their reality, and fresh tears spilled over her cheeks. “And I you, Jeremy. Take care of our daughter and know that I love you both.” She moved her soft lips against his one last time and stared into his eyes. “Now go. Take her and get out of here. Before anything else happens.”

  He nodded, pulled Sam’s arm. Her hand found his and clenched it painfully. There were no more words left to say.

  “Mom.”

  Susan nodded. “Baby, take me with you on your adventures. Listen to your Dad, but take me with you in your heart. This isn’t the end, Sam. It’s just a new beginning. Daddy will take care of you. Now go.”

  Sturgeon thumped his gun against his fist. “Go. Now. Before I change my mind.”

  With dismay, Jeremy tore his gaze from his wife and moved for the door.

  “Wait,” he heard Susan call out weakly. He dropped Sam’s hand and returned to her side. “My pocket,” she whispered. “My left pocket.”

  Before the intruders could stop him, he plunged his hand into her pocket, and there, deep within the folds of cotton, his fingers found the shapes of seven small round disks. He nearly choked with the intensity of his emotions. She’d remembered what he’d forgotten, must’ve slipped them into her pocket when she’d
retrieved the gun. Wordlessly he pressed his lips to hers, and palming the precious medication, rose to rejoin his daughter. Swaying precariously, Doctor Jack pushed himself to his feet and lurched after them as the three left the sanctuary of the warm room and entered the silence of the night. They scampered across the winding front path and down stairs that snaked around to the garage below the crest of the hill.

  “Stop,” Jack said breathlessly. “I need to rest.”

  Jeremy spun around to face the doctor, his eyes flashing. He expected that he might throttle the man, beat and smother him, cut, or maim him, but strangely he felt only pity. Look at him! The doctor was as good as dead. Without proper care, a gunshot wound would fester and eventually kill him. That, or the loss of blood would do the job first.

  “I’m a liability,” the man whimpered, “I can’t make it down this hill much less through the woods. You need to go on without me. I’ve already lost too much blood.”

  Jeremy nodded. The doctor certainly wouldn’t get any arguments or sympathy from him. He peered up at his cabin, at the curling smoke that lifted from the chimney, at the warm light that flickered in bright tones of orange and yellow from the large picture window that overlooked their precious garden. His mind tripped over all that he’d lost and a white-hot blade of anger began to twist in his gut. This wasn’t fair. None of it. It wasn’t right. He pictured the life these men would live, the years they’d spend walking the halls of his home and sleeping in the comforts of his beds. He imagined the warm nights they’d spend beside his hearth, feasting on his supplies and gorging themselves of his daughter’s freshly grown spinach and kale.

  No. He repeated the word over and over. No. He wouldn’t allow them this luxury. He couldn’t. Not after Susan. These men had built nothing, had done no work to deserve these opulent spoils. His resolve hardened and he clamped his teeth together like a steel vise. He wouldn’t let them have it. He’d not let them spit into the face of his father. He’d not let them soil his legacy. It was as simple as that. If Jeremy couldn’t have this life then no one could. Though part of him knew the sentiment was childish, he succumbed to it just the same.