The Journal: Crimson Skies: (The Journal Book 3) (5 page)

There was a pause on his end. “There is a
checkpoint on the edge of town. I will notify them of the arrival.
Please understand there will be some necessary processing before
they are allowed to move into any housing,” he said. “It should
only take a few hours. And would you get word to her that she
should bring whatever food she has as a gift of sorts for her
family? It will help out until the rations can be adjusted.”

“I’m right here, Captain. I will be sure to
do that,” Anna answered.

“I have a question or two for you, captain,”
I pressed.

“Yes, Ms. Smeth?”

“First, are we allowed into town to shop? And
next, I would like your word again that we will be left alone out
here.” I reminded him of what he promised.

“Yes, Ma’am, you have my word that you will
be left alone. As for shopping, I will have to get back to you on
that. What few shipments we have gotten in are needed for those
under our care,” he replied. At least he didn’t say no.

I hung up the phone.

“I hope he’s a man of his word, Allexa,” Anna
said. “We will stop by on our way in to say goodbye.”

JOURNAL ENTRY: August 5

It was a busy day! All of us pitched in to get
Joshua and the animals moved into their new home. Amanda had
already done the cleaning, and said it was easy and it looked as if
Jill had cleaned before leaving.

*

“It really was just a wipe down to get rid of
the dust, then mopping and vacuuming,” Amanda said. “Jason had the
generator going to test it out, so I washed all the curtains and
hung them back up on the windows to dry. The place is ready.” She
smiled in satisfaction. “I’m glad there was something I could do to
help. Some days I feel so useless.”

Our biggest challenge was getting old Bossy
onto a trailer for the move. She did
not
want to get in
there. With Joshua on one side and Matilda on the other, Bossy
eventually relented and made the trip to her new home. She
immediately took to grazing under the apple trees, as did
Matilda.

“I don’t know how to thank everyone, Miss
Allexa,” Joshua mumbled, looking embarrassed.

“There’s no need, Joshua. We’re all happy to
have you here. You’re the first step in us establishing a new
community,” I said to him. “It’s like the phoenix that rises from
the ashes, we will rise too, one wing at a time.”

August 6

Anna, George and Carolyn stopped by this
afternoon on their way into Marquette.

“I don’t know if you will be allowed to
communicate with us, but if you get the chance, Anna, please leave
me a message at the township. I’d like to know how you’re doing.
I’ll check the answering machine every Friday.” I hugged her
goodbye.

“Here are my rifles and the shotgun,” George
said, laying three weapons on the table. “I’m going to keep this
old .22 revolver. The firing pin is messed up, so it’s no good, and
I thought it might be interesting to see what becomes of it when we
go through their processing procedure.” He gave me a wink. I think
George understood more than he was letting on.

“Here are the keys to the pickup truck,” he
went on. “It’s yours if you need it, and don’t forget it takes
diesel.”

Carolyn already had tears in her eyes, and
her hug was long and surprisingly strong.

“I think this time it
is
good to ‘let
go and let God’,” she said, tears trickling down her heavily lined
cheeks.

“Yes it is, Pastor. I hope to see you again,”
I said in all honesty.

“Well, if I see Him first, I’ll put in a good
word for you,” she said.

The three got into Anna’s car and left.

“I feel as if I’ve lost a large piece of
myself,” I commented to Mark over a simple dinner of pasta served
with a thickened venison soup and fresh bread.

“I understand, Allex. They’ve been a large
and important part of your life for a long time. Well, maybe not a
long time, but definitely during an important time of your life,”
Mark said.

August 7

I harvested the first of the green beans from
the greenhouse, the ones I planted in early June. They were small
and thin and I wanted us to have the very first of what was
produced. I felt selfish that I didn’t want to share with my sons,
not yet anyway, so I kept the beans a secret until dinner.

“Where did you get fresh beans, Allex?” Mark
said with obvious joy when I set his plate in front of him.

“These are the first of what I planted back
just before my birthday. I know they’re small, but I wanted us to
have some first. I think they go well with the spiced beef stew on
fresh pasta, one of my favorite recipes from
Cooking in the
Woods
.”

I smiled. I know I was still trying to
impress Mark, or maybe it was more wanting to please him now. I lit
the slender white candles on the table and turned on the battery CD
player for some soft music.

He poured some wine in my glass, then in his.
The love I saw in his eyes took my breath away.

The song “Waiting For a Girl Like You” came
on. Mark stood and took my hand, pulling me into his arms for a
very romantic slow dance and I knew I had made the right decision
to marry him.

August 8

Jason grinned. “We hit the jackpot, Mom.”

“Big time!” Eric slapped his brother’s
shoulder. “If this works the way I think it will, that is.”

“What are you two talking about? And where
have you been now?”

I knew they had gone off on one of their
scavenging jaunts, and they don’t tell me where until they’re back.
I’ve tried to explain that wasn’t a good practice.

“We decided to check out the Sportsman Club
down near Blind Belly Road,” Jason said. “I doubted we find any
ammo or weapons, which we didn’t, but we found targets. Boxes and
boxes of metal targets, you know the kind that pivot or spin when
hit?” He paused for effect. “They’re bulletproof, Mom.”

“From my understanding,” Eric went on, “they
will withstand a small caliber bullet, anything under a .38, like a
.22. However, if we layer them, they might stop armor-piercing
rounds such as a .45 pistol shot, or a rifle in 5.56 or 7.62. Since
the targets are only one-eight inch thick, it might take four or
more to make them effective, but we’ve got lots to play with.”

“I thought we could make a sandwich-board
with two, creating a sort of bulletproof vest, but they’re too
heavy for that,” Jason said. “If the layering works, I can build us
protection to shoot from behind. I think certain windows that we
might use to fire from can be made much safer!”

“And after we test out how many are required
to withstand armor-piercing rounds, I’d like to make a protected
crows-nest up on the roof,” Eric said.

These two never cease to amaze me.

August 9

Late in the afternoon I heard some commotion
outside only to find out the boys had finished their target testing
and Eric was hauling lumber and some of the heavy metal sheets up
on to the roof. They hammered away for an hour then came down.

“I’m not quite done, Mom, but do you want to
see your latest addition?”

“Not really, Eric,” I replied. “The need for
what you’re doing is a reminder of how much danger we’re still in,
and I really don’t want to think about that right now.”

“Oh, okay.” He sounded disappointed. “I’m
leaving the ladder here for now, at least until we finish. After
that, if it’s alright, Jason thinks we should build a permanent
ladder on this side of the house too.”

I reached out and took his hand. “Eric, I
really do understand the need, and I think what you’ve come up with
is ingenious, but I’m tired. I’ll look at it another time.”

JOURNAL ENTRY: August 10

We spent the morning working in both the greenhouse
and in the garden. The garden is alive, barely, not flourishing
like it should. However, there hasn’t been any regular sunshine in
weeks, with the exception of a few days surrounding our wedding, a
brief respite from the dreariness. The solar panels in the
greenhouse are working out very well. Even ambient light recharges
the batteries that keep the pond and the lights going.

The high ash cloud is now circling the world, a band
that is allowing only filtered sunlight to the northern hemisphere.
Without Internet or television it’s impossible to know if South
America is helping with the food shortage, or how they are
affected.

*

At two o’clock, Mark and I drove to the
township hall to see if there was a message from Anna. I was
delighted to see a light blinking on the answering machine.

“We need to start the generator to listen to
this call,” I said to Mark. “Let me show you where the switch is,
in case you ever need to use it.”

We went through the hall into meeting room
where we had done the food distribution last winter and from there
into the maintenance area. In Pete’s office everything was neatly
labeled and I quickly found the switch that turned on the whisper
quiet generator that ran on propane.

“Let’s hope there is enough gas left so we
can at least listen. If not, we’ll take the machine back to the
house with us.”

“
Allexa,”
Anna’s voice came over the
speaker
, “it’s Thursday and we just arrived at my sister’s
house. This has been a horrible experience! The three-hour
processing has taken three days! Right after we got there, we were
immediately separated and questioned. Interrogated is more like it.
I don’t know where Carolyn is, I haven’t seen her since we got
here.

“
George told me later that they took the
gun, as expected, but kept demanding to know where his ammunition
was. When he told them he’d used it all hunting rabbits, they
laughed at him and pointed the empty gun at his head and pulled the
trigger! And they took away George’s pocketknife, the one his
father gave him for his sixteenth birthday fifty years ago. I’m not
sure if that made George sad or angry.

“
That night we got our suitcases back. Of
course they had gone through them. It looked like they had dumped
it all out then stuffed it back in. Oh, and my jewelry case is
gone.

“
This place is nasty, Allexa. It’s dirty,
smelly, and overcrowded. We each get one bottle of water a day,
plus a bowl of rice and one slice of bread. That’s it! One skimpy
meal per day. I kept trying to tell them we had family to go to,
but they wouldn’t listen.

“
And the nighttime. Lord have mercy! We
could hear things… hitting, beatings, crying, and other things I
don’t even want think about. We huddled in a corner, hands over our
ears, but even that didn’t keep out the sound of the rats scurrying
around.

“
We finally just up and walked out this
morning when no one was watching. Even though the car keys had been
taken from us, I had a spare in one of those magnetic boxes, so we
did get the car back. The box of food we had for my sister was
gone, and most of the gas had been siphoned out.

“
I never expected to be treated this way!
If you ever talk to that Captain Andrews again, don’t trust him! He
lied to us. The city is in shambles and I’m so worried about
Carolyn.”

I was stunned.

Just then a military Humvee sped by on the
main street, going out of town, followed shortly by Kathy’s red
convertible. With the top down it was easy to see that she wasn’t
in the car, but two soldiers were, and they looked like they were
having a great time.

“Mark, go shut the generator off, and hurry!”
I said. I unplugged the answering machine and wrapped the cord
around it. I stuck it in the back seat of the car before Mark
rejoined me. As soon as he got in, I headed for Bob and Kathy’s
house down the road.

That car was Kathy’s baby and she would never
ever let someone take it! Something was very wrong.

The front door to the house stood open. I
pulled my Kel-Tec from the shoulder holster and edged along the
garage, trying to stay out of direct sight of the foyer. Once
alongside the door, I peeked in and almost lost it. There was so
much blood!

“Mark! Help me here!” I called out, and
stepped inside.

Bob was in the living room, sitting in a
kitchen chair, tied tightly with what looked like a clothesline.
His head was down, his chin resting above the ropes that were used.
I could see a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

It was deathly silent. I put my gun away and
followed the red streaks on the floor to the kitchen, where Kathy
had dragged herself and lay in a pool of wet blood. I gently turned
her over. Her face had been battered and her lip was split. Her red
hair was smeared with the deeper red of congealing blood oozing
from a cut on her scalp. Her jeans were pulled half off and still
clung to one foot.

Mark quickly knelt down opposite me and
searched for a pulse.

“She’s still alive,” he reassured me. “Bob is
dead.”

I stood shakily, and noticed that all the
cupboards were opened and everything had been pulled out and thrown
on the floor.

“Allex! Pull yourself together and get her a
blanket, a sheet, anything!” Mark commanded.

I looked at him for a second, then ran to
their bedroom and yanked off the top blanket from the bed. I
stopped in the bathroom long enough to grab a couple of big
towels.

“Can you help her, Mark?” I asked, freeing
her foot from the bloody and torn jeans, and then tucked one of the
towels between her legs where most of the blood was coming from. It
was obvious she had been raped, brutally, and perhaps
repeatedly.

“I hope so. We need to get her back to the
house where I can examine her better. Help me wrap her in this
blanket and get her to the car,” Mark was so calm, so
business-like.