Dark Road (7 page)

“Agreed. So, we go over sometime in the middle of the night when everyone is supposed to be asleep.” Dan wasn’t foolish enough to think everyone was asleep in the middle of the night. He closed his eyes to ask the next question because it was one he was dreading.

“Do we both go, or just you, or just me?” Dan asked.

Marissa didn’t like the answer but didn’t hesitate either. “Both of us go. There’s going to be too much to bring back and, frankly, you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

Dan nodded.

“Plus, heaven forbid someone is already in the house, there is no way I can defend myself alone.” Marissa said. “We both need to be there to help each other.”

“You’re better at this than I am, you know that?” Dan smiled and it actually reached his eyes.

“You have a lot on your plate and you’re doing fine.” She gave him an impish smile and a kiss on the nose and then they heard Jessie start to make morning waking-up noises.

“Day 70.”

“Day 70.” Marissa agreed and then said, “Day 1.”

“Of…” Dan prompted.

“Preparing to get out of here, in earnest.” Marissa said.

“Amen to that.”

Chapter Eight

The last week in the Clark household was a flurry of activity. Both Dan and Marissa had to keep up with all of their usual community responsibilities while preparing as best they could, in secret, to leave at a moment’s notice.

Food was going to be their biggest concern. They hadn’t been prepared with long-term food storage, by any means, but they had both been amazed how far what they’d had in the house could be stretched. Dan and Marissa still let the girls have a little extra here and there if they were hungry at meals, but the extra activity took its toll on the adults. They had practiced packing the kiddie-carrier toddler seat on Dan’s bike—both seats had been re-installed on his and Marissa’s bikes under the pretense of carrying more water from the river—and packing the pull-behind bike trailer.

Jessie would be in the pull-behind, and Bekah was going to have to ride her own bike. That’s all there was to it. It would cut down on how much they could carry, but there was no way Jessie could keep up otherwise—and Bekah had been riding without training wheels for two years. Now all they needed was a destination.

They planned to go to the Taylor’s house later tonight and get the rest of the guns and ammo, and then continue gathering as much food, and any other supplies they came across, for the next week or so.

Although he knew it was the right thing to do, Dan was struggling with the plan to leave.  The younger of the two kids that Dan had seen in the hospital, the boy, had died two days afterwards, in his sleep. His breathing had become labored to the point that finally, it simply stopped. The girl, the older of the two, still held on, but had been unconscious for the last three days, and Dan had serious doubts that she would make it.

The worst part of leaving was the fact that the neighborhood would have nobody with any real medical training. He wouldn’t discuss it with Marissa because he knew she would tell him that if the tables were turned they would leave him so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

People still showed up with burns, and cuts, and even the occasional broken bone or dislocated joint that he could actually fix. When he was gone…
quit thinking about it, it’ll drive you mad.

Marissa was already dressed in black jeans and a navy top and it was Dan’s turn to get into the darkest clothes he had.

…

“OK,” Marissa said. “The girls are asleep. I hate to do it, but we’ve got to leave a couple of downstairs windows open. It’s too hot to close everything up and I tried just having upstairs windows open for a while and it got stifling down here.”

“We can put it off until its cooler,” Dan said. “Speaking of which, aren’t you going to roast in that?” Marissa was wearing a black windbreaker over a tank top.

Marissa shook her head. “I didn’t have anything dark enough with longer sleeves so it’s this or my pasty white arms will glow in the dark. And no, we can’t. If we start postponing now then we’ll keep finding reasons to put it off and then we’ll get found out.”

Dan nodded.

“I know,” Marissa said. “I’ve seen you moping around the house. We’ve been married for ten years, Dan; I can read you like a book. You are feeling bad for ‘abandoning’ all these people. Don’t, you yourself said it’s them or us just a few days ago.”

Dan nodded again, “I know. Funny thing is that it doesn’t really make it any easier to just up and leave.” Dan looked around the downstairs in the candlelight and wondered aloud, “How hard must it have been for the Taylors, Eric and Karen, and Sheri?”

“Truth?” Marissa asked.

“Truth.”

“Murder. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave,” Marissa laughed mirthlessly. “Obviously…we’re still here even now.”

“So, let’s limit the open windows to the back of the house.” Dan said.

“Agreed, and we lock the doors.”

Dan smiled. “Obviously.”

…

At 2:00 am, when any sane person should have been dead-to-the-world asleep, Carey was prowling around his house. It had been a hot day, which had led to a hot night. It was humid and he was sticky and grumpy. Now he couldn’t go back to sleep. “Should’a moved everyone downstairs like the Clarks,” he said under his breath, trying not to wake up his wife and daughter.

It was while he was roving around the house that he happened to look out the window and see, just barely, two shadows cross the street a couple of houses down…about where Eric Tripp used to live.

“Now what in the,” Carey stopped himself before he swore. He’d been finding it more and more difficult to do that recently, and being a good Christian man he knew that ‘Thoughts led to Words led to Actions.’ He was going to nip it in the bud at thoughts. He crouched down into the shadows of his own house and kept looking out the window in hopes of catching another glimpse. He didn’t dare go outside, as the last thing he wanted to do was scare off whoever was sneaking around in the dark, at least not yet.

His patience was rewarded when the pair of shadows emerged from around the corner of the Taylor’s old place. The last time he’d been in there, after Dan had found the sleeping bags in the attic, he’d locked the back door for some reason. He hadn’t known why he did it, he just had. Turned out that luck may have been on his side; it looked like whoever this was had tried the back door first and was going to have to come in the front door instead.

Then he recognized them. He wasn’t sure if it was the taller one’s build or the length of the woman’s hair—it was obviously a woman—but he was sure it was Dan and Marissa Clark. “Now isn’t that interesting,” Carey said to himself, and made a quick decision.

…

“I swear the back door was unlocked the last time I was here,” Dan said.

“It’s fine, let’s just get inside and get back home. And quit talking, sound carries.” Marissa said.

The front door was still unlocked and that was a good thing. If the door had been locked Dan wasn’t sure what he would have done. Probably knocked out a window and gone inside anyway. His nerves were shot from sneaking the block-and-a-half over here.

Once inside, Dan showed Marissa the postcards on the corkboard in what used to be the kitchen. Marissa looked at them for about half a minute and then turned to Dan. “I’m willing to bet they went to Natchez Trace,” she said.

“How in the world can you say that?” He asked.

“A couple of reasons. One, it’s the closest one and without refueling they couldn’t have made it to any of the other parks in what they were driving—none of them could. Two, if you look at them, these are from old trips; they weren’t originally on this board. See the tape on the corners of these two? They came from a photo album or scrapbook. One of them was even sent to them from someone else, ‘To: Aunt Rachael and Uncle Joel’. Three, Natchez Trace is pinned on top of all the others. Every other postcard has at least one corner or piece of the postcard under another card, but the one for Natchez Trace is completely on top. It’s not totally obvious the way they are arranged, but everything together says this was left for someone to find and tell them where they went.”

“You really are better at this than I am,” Dan said for what felt like the thousandth time in the last week.

“And I’m still trying to make up for you getting into the gun safe. Let’s go.”

They were carrying the stuff sacks for the sleeping bags to hold the ammunition. Marissa had the 9mm between the belt and waistband of her jeans on her left side, butt forward for a cross body draw if she needed it, and was hoping there was a holster for it in the safe. Depending on what remained, Dan would be carrying a pistol and a rifle or shotgun on the way back, and so would she.

Dan didn’t turn his flashlight back on until they were upstairs in the master bedroom closet and ready to open the safe. It worked just like last time, and Marissa grinned when she saw that Dan had been right.

There was indeed a shotgun, another pistol, a hunting rifle, and a ‘small rifle’. “We’re taking it all and it’s a good thing I came along,” she said. The first thing she did was scan for a holster—of which there ended up being four. She took off her belt, threaded the holster on, seated the 9mm back on her left hip, and felt much more comfortable. “There, that was driving me nuts. Ok, your turn.”

The remaining pistol was smaller but still another 9mm, and designed to be used as a concealed-carry piece. Of the two remaining holsters to choose from, they decided on one that clipped onto Dan’s belt. “This will be convenient, only one caliber for the handguns.” There were nine boxes of 9mm left in the safe, which meant 500 rounds total. They took all nine boxes.

The shotgun was a Remington Super Express Magnum 12 gauge with a 28’ barrel. “Grab twenty boxes of,” Marissa paused for a second, “of the ‘zero-zero’ shells.”

Dan snorted. “Ok, sweetheart, I don’t know anything about guns but double-ought was around before guns were invented.” He smiled at her to take any sting out of the comment.

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure. We need slugs too, then.”

Dan gave her a blank look.

Marissa shook her head. “That would be bullets for the shotgun, dear; they say 12 GA Slug on the box.”

“Gotcha, how many?” Dan asked

“There’s only five to a box, so ten.”

That left the two rifles. Dan asked “Do we need them both?”

Marissa sighed, not out of frustration but because she was resigned to what she was about to say next, now that she had seen what was in the safe. “Yes, because I want to teach Bekah how to shoot the small one.”

Dan didn’t say anything at all, he couldn’t. He was thunderstruck.

“Don’t look at me like that; you’re going to learn on it too.” Marissa said. “That ‘little one’ is the venerable Ruger 10/22. It’s what my Dad first taught me how to shoot with when I was just a little older than Bekah and there’s no reason she can’t learn to shoot on it now too.”

She moved Dan’s hand to point the flashlight at the boxes of ammunition again. “That is the .22 ammunition.” She pointed it down to the bags, “and that is the 9mm ammunition. You are going to need practice no matter what. Each of those tubs has 2/3 as many rounds as all the 9mm in the safe.

“There are almost three hundred and fifty rounds of .22 in each of those tubs,” she pointed the flashlight back at the safe. The tubs were not quite twice the size of a butter tub. “And that ammo will allow you to get used to things going bang, Dan, and let Bekah and Jessie get used to it, too. And if Bekah can get good with a .22 there’s no reason she can’t hunt rabbit and squirrel, if there’s any left.”

“Ok, good point. I’m sorry; I just wasn’t expecting my eight-year-old daughter to have to learn to shoot a gun.” Dan was still visibly coming to grips with it, though.

“I didn’t expect her to have to either.” Marissa said softly.

After a quick hug they turned back to the task at hand. “Ok, let’s get this over with and get home.” Marissa said. “I hate leaving the girls by themselves.”

“What do we need for the rifle?” Dan asked.

After a quick examination, Marissa said they needed all ten boxes of .30-30. “It’s a .30-30, and the scope will come in handy even without the rifle.”

“I understood nothing but ‘the scope will come in handy’.” Dan replied.

“But you’re a quick study and I love you anyway. Now let’s go.”

Both rifles and the shotgun had carrying cases and they took a minute to zip them up and stow them correctly. It also made carrying them easier. Dan carried the hunting rifle, and the shotgun, and both bags of ammo. Marissa carried the .22.

On the way out of the closet, Dan motioned with the flashlight and said, “That’s where I found the,” and stopped. Marissa looked at Dan and she could see he’d gone pale, but she hadn’t followed the flashlight beam yet.

“What’s wrong, Dan?” Then she looked where he nodded. There was another bar of Irish Spring under the sink.

“Maybe you missed it last time?” She asked, knowing he couldn’t have. The room was white and beige and the box was
green
for crying out loud. She was pretty sure she could see it in the dark if he turned off the flashlight.

“Carey put it there; he knew it was there all along.” Dan said. “No wonder he’s been suspicious of me, of us, ever since I came here last time.” Dan ran his hand through his hair which sent the flashlight beam all over the bathroom and reflecting off the mirror.

“I told him I found two bars of soap under the sink because I had the box of bullets in my pocket.” Dan was back to calling ammo bullets. “The soap and the box were about the same size on the end so I told him I found two bars of soap.” He looked at Marissa. “I pulled out the
one
bar of soap that I found and offered to give him
one
of the bars of soap. He could still see the bulge in my pocket and he knew there was only one bar of soap in the bathroom all along. He knew I found something else up here and he’s been suspicious ever since.”

“Let’s go home, we just need to get back and we can figure out what to do in the morning.” Marissa said. “Everything will be fine. Let’s go.”