Ashes of the unspeakable, p.21
Ashes of the Unspeakable, page 21
Charlie wasn’t addicted to pain pills, but he sure liked one occasionally. This time it wasn’t about getting a buzz. This time it was about trying to wash himself free of the burning in his face, the pain and stinging that was nearly driving him mad. He remembered once, when he was in his thirties, wanting pain pills so bad that he took a Phillips screwdriver, shoved it between his ribs, and collapsed his own lung. When he collapsed to the parking lot and felt the pain of what he’d done, it was the worst he’d ever experienced. This was not nearly that bad, but it hurt like fucking hell.
Angie returned with a handful of Band-Aids, alcohol, gauze, tape, and other supplies. “What happened to you?”
“I got shot,” he moaned.
Robert could not hold back a smile. “You got caught,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he even knew what he was doing.
Pain or no pain, Charlie was out of the chair in the blink of an eye, his open hand connecting with Robert’s face and knocking him from his feet. Robert tripped over the brick hearth and fell hard. He lay on the floor, holding his reddening face, staring furiously at the ground.
“You and me are fixing to have a big problem, boy. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my fucking sight for a long damn time.”
Robert crawled from the room, down the hall, and into a bedroom where he shut the door softly behind him, making not another sound.
“You ought not treat him that way,” Angie said. “He’s your own flesh and blood. Your brother wouldn’t like what you just did.”
Charlie collapsed back in his chair. “Dammit, woman, my brother ain’t here. I’m here. I’m bleeding and I’m tired of listening to your mouth. Patch me the fuck up. I don’t give a shit about that boy right now.”
Angie stared at him. “He ain’t a boy, he’s a man. And I give a shit about him. So did your brother.”
Charlie had enough and a chill settled over him. He was near the place of unrepentant fury, the place where he could wipe all traces of his brother’s family from this Godforsaken valley. “You’re fixing to meet Jesus if you keep talking.”
Angie bit her tongue. She had no doubt of Charlie’s seriousness. “Take your shirt off.”
Charlie pulled his shirt off over his head. His face and chest were bleeding from dozens of little wounds. Splinters protruded from many of them. Angie winced at the sight of it.
“All anybody in this family wants to do is run their mouth,” Charlie continued, his voice beginning to slur from the pills he’d taken. “A man can only take so much.”
Angie stood up. “I’ll need tweezers.”
She went to the bathroom and found some. In the cabinet she saw an old-fashioned straight razor sitting with a shaving brush in a mug. She considered taking the razor and slitting Charlie’s throat right where he sat. She’d do it in front of God, her children, and everyone. She knew it would save her a lot of heartache to do it now and get it over with, but she didn’t think she could. She’d never been a good decision-maker.
Maybe she’d have to, later. She grabbed the razor and tucked it into the pocket of her shorts.
Just in case.
*
After a few hours of sleep, Charlie woke up in the chair where he’d passed out. Everyone else was awake and was in a sour mood. They all seemed pissed at him but he wasn’t sure what they thought he’d done. What the hell did those people expect, anyway? He went out and risked his life to try and find supplies for all of them and this was the thanks he got? He had to get out of there for the day. To hell with all of them.
He found a good pair of binoculars in Henry’s bedroom closet. He looked through the guns he’d accumulated, searching for a replacement for the revolver he’d lost in his fight after getting shot last night. He ended up choosing a Winchester lever-action .30-.30. He’d always liked those, probably from so many fond memories of watching westerns on television when he was a kid. He worked the action, enjoying the mechanical clatter of it. There was a box of shells in the closet. It was a full box of twenty rounds and surely to God he’d not need more than that to get through the day.
He took his binoculars and rifle and went to the truck and drove away from the lot of them. They receded in his rear-view mirror like a headache responding to aspirin.
When he neared the house that he wanted to watch, he pulled the truck off the road. He opened an unlocked gate and pulled the truck through, leaving it parked in the weeds. He locked the truck and pocketed the keys. There were lots of son-of-a-bitches wandering around these days who’d steal your shit.
He walked along the fence line through the thick weeds, keeping an eye out for any people. He wanted to position himself across from the house where that woman and her kids lived. He had to know what they had. This was his mission now. He would hide in the weeds and keep an eye on them. He would get in that house at all costs. If he succeeded, he might just leave Angie and her kids where they were. He needed some space. He had a hard time thinking with the racket all those children made. Angie wasn’t much better. She was so damn mopey anymore and always siding with that oldest boy of hers.
He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled when he came within sight of the house, staying close to the fence and then working his way into the ditch line. He had planted himself in the weeded ditch across from the gate when he heard a vehicle approaching. It was coming down the road from the house. He locked his binoculars onto them. It was an older man and woman. This was not the woman that lived here. He didn’t know these people, but they must mean something to that woman or they wouldn’t have been there. From their age, he wondered if they could be her parents. That would be nice. Charlie could do a lot with that scenario.
The man got out, opened the gate and drove through. For a moment, Charlie panicked, thinking the man might pull off the shoulder of the road and run over him, but he didn’t. He was damn close, though. The man hopped out of the cab and began plodding back to close the gate. Through the open cab door, Charlie saw the woman was asleep now.
Charlie’s brain was overloaded with possibilities. He could steal the truck. Maybe these people were going somewhere important. Someplace where they had supplies stashed. He didn’t know, but thought maybe he should find out. With hardly a thought, he rose from his hiding place, put a foot on the truck tire, and soundlessly pulled himself into the tall bed. It was a heavy duty work truck that sat high off the ground. Charlie knew that unless the man lowered the tailgate he’d never see him. He did not even breathe again until he heard the truck door shut and the shifter move into gear.
He did not know where he was going. He had not thought this out completely; however, he had certainly taken bigger chances on less information than this. Maybe it would turn into something. Maybe it would give him some leverage.
*
The Russell County Medical Center was probably the largest building in the town of Lebanon, Virginia. Originally a small hospital started by two local doctors, it had grown steadily over the years. It was now a conglomeration of multiple additions and wings that made it pretty difficult to know where you were even supposed to enter the building. Pops had been on their Board of Directors for years and was on a first name basis with most of the doctors. As soon as he got within sight of the hospital, he could tell that it was sheer chaos there. The parking lots were overflowing and cars were parked along both sides of the road leading up to the hospital. Folks were walking back and forth to vehicles, some crying, some being carried.
Pops saw nothing blocking the ambulance bay doors at the ER, so he drove straight there. He could see that the Emergency Room was crammed with people. In fact, there was a line extending out the door. Two gurneys stood outside the ambulance bay. Blue sheets were stretched across what was obviously dead bodies. There were heavy blood stains on one of the sheets. Having no interest in waiting in that line, Pops parked at the swinging doors that were typically used to bring emergency patients in on stretchers. He barged through the doors into sheer pandemonium.
There were no lights and folks were using headlamps, flashlights, and battery lanterns to get around. There was screaming and crying. Three more bodies lay in the triage areas covered fully by sheets, obviously dead. With no functional instruments, the few nurses who were working were limited in what they could do. They could take temperatures, administer oxygen for as long as they had it, stitch and splint, but any advanced procedures were pretty much off the table for the immediate future. Pops wondered how long medications would hold out at this rate.
When no one noticed him, Pops bellowed. “Harrison? Where’s Dr. Harrison?” His voice was so loud that there was no ignoring it.
A nurse trying to get an injection into an uncooperative woman looked at him with a glimmer of recognition, like she’d seen Pops before but she couldn’t place him. “No one’s seen him in days,” she said. “We don’t know where he is.”
Pops frowned. “What about Nelson?”
The nurse shook her head. “He hasn’t left here in a week. I’m not sure where he is at the moment.”
“So who’s working the ER? There has to be a doctor.”
“I am,” the nurse replied. “And Pam over there.”
“That’s it? With all these people out there?”
She nodded. “That line’s not going down. It keeps getting longer.”
Pops realized he’d better take advantage of what expertise he could get. He wasn’t wasting any more time looking for a doctor. “My wife is sick – coughing, fever, kind of rattly.”
“Have you started her on antibiotics?”
“Yes.”
“She have cough medicine?”
“Yes.”
The nurse finally landed her injection, tossed the empty syringe in a sharps container, and went to a cabinet on the wall. She pulled a key from around her neck and opened the cabinet, then removed a pre-loaded syringe and a white bottle. “Give her this injection in her arm and start her on the pills. Two pills, three times a day.”
“I’ll never remember that.”
The nurse frowned, pulled a pen from her pocket, and scribbled a note on the side of the white bottle. She handed the items to Pops and he put them in his pocket. He started to thank the woman but when he looked up from his pocket she was gone. To his left there was a horrific wail and a woman holding a child began rocking the child back and forth, screaming. The child was dead.
Pops burst back through the doors he’d entered. He felt a rush of euphoria, feeling like he’d taken a significant step toward getting his wife back on track. He stopped dead in his tracks. His world collapsed around him.
His truck was gone.
He looked around, thinking maybe someone had moved it because of where he’d left it. He didn’t see it. He saw a man smoking nearby. “You see what happened to my truck?” he demanded.
“Drove off.”
Pops stepped up to the man and got in his face. Despite his age, he was intimidating. He stood a full six foot seven inches tall. “Who the hell drove it off?”
The man shrugged. “That feller that was in the back got out and drove it off.”
“There wasn’t anyone in the back.”
The man nodded, his eyes wide with fear. “There was. He crawled right out of there and hopped in the front. Gave me a little wave as he was pulling out.”
Pops roared with anger. He was frantic. He put his head in his hands and stood there. It was his fault. The day was hot and he’d left the keys in the truck, with the A/C running to keep Nana comfortable. Now she was gone. He had to do something.
He shoved his way back into the ER. “Call the police. Somebody stole my truck and kidnapped my wife.”
Despite his volume and rage, no one responded. All he got was stares. He tried to tone it down a notch, to appear less threatening. “I need to call the police!”
Everyone continued to stare like he was losing his mind.
“Won’t anyone help me?”
Silence.
Then it was broken by an overweight, toothless lady in her sixties wearing a tank-top and sweatpants. “There ain’t no phones,” she said.
“Dammit!”
Pops turned and kicked the door open, barging through. He started walking.
Chapter 23
Intersection of Route 19 and Route 460
Claypool Hill, VA
The largest highway intersection in the region was at Claypool Hill, where Highways 19 and 460 either joined or diverged, depending on which way you were headed. From the Tazewell direction, a right at Claypool Hill led you to Grundy, Virginia, and then into Kentucky. Continuing straight on Route 19 South led you to Russell County and then into Tennessee. This would be where the group finally parted ways. Gary would continue another couple of miles with the family on the tractor until they discharged him at the town of Cedar Bluff. Randi and Jim would walk the remaining couple of miles to their office complex and find a place to stay for the night. Earlier in the day, Jim had hoped that by catching a ride they might make it down here early enough to walk on to his house. That had not happened. Although the tractor was faster and easier, it was not significantly faster. It was nearly 7 p.m. when they reached this point. The miles between them and the office were probably all that Jim and Randi could hope to cover this evening.
Riding those last few miles together on the wagon, the trio discussed how they might maintain contact once everyone reached their homes. After this much time together, each felt that they were somewhat invested in the others reaching home. Each wanted their companions to get home and find their family safely awaiting them. Jim wasn’t the sort to get all sentimental about this kind of thing. He acknowledged that they had some sort of connection, perhaps the kind of connection that survivors of any life-threatening event experienced. Still, he wasn’t ready to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. That was not his kind of thing.
“I tried for several years to get you to get your HAM license, Jim. If you’d done it, and bought the little Baofeng handheld that I recommended, this would be no issue. I’m certain that we could reach each other easily with those radios.”
Jim had been kicking himself for this every time he thought about it on the walk home. As he saw it, there were two big failures in his preparations. He was certain there were probably several thousand small failures but only two big ones that gnawed at him over all the miles he’d walked. The first was that he hadn’t replaced the family dogs who’d died this past year. They’d had two since purchasing their small farm. They got them around the same time. One was a German Shepard and coonhound mix that Jim had found in a dumpster while tossing in a bag of garbage. He named him Crow, because he was small, black, and eating garbage. The other was an Australian Shepard.
Both dogs had been getting older and Crow had died the past winter of old age. The Australian Shepard, Panda, had been killed in the spring when a group of coyotes came through. They killed Panda and ate five cats. The losses had been hard on the family and Jim hadn’t been ready to replace them yet. Every farm needed a dog. They provided the best alarm system and were one of the first lines of defense on a homestead. Jim had kicked himself each day for not leaving his family with one good dog guarding the house.
The second thing that he was punishing himself over was for not obtaining the HAM radios that Gary had encouraged him to buy. It was possible that those radios would have allowed him to communicate with his family already. Even if he couldn’t reach them directly, it was highly likely that he could have found another HAM operator who could have reached them and relayed a message.
Honestly, the only reason he didn’t have the license was that he didn’t want to go take the test. He had no doubt he could have passed it, he just didn’t want to go take it. Even so, he should have bought the damn radio. The Chinese radios were cheap and at this point who was going to be checking for licenses anyway? If he owned it, he could be using it now regardless of whether he had a license or not. It only went to show that no matter how well one prepared, there were always gaps.
“Okay, I don’t have the radio, we’ve established that. What now?”
“I’m about three miles’ walk from the top of Kent’s Ridge,” Gary said after a moment of thought. “You’re only a couple of miles from Clinch Mountain, right?”
“Just about one mile,” Jim said.
“Then how about we say that three days from now I go to my high spot, you go to yours, and we try to reach each other with the radios that we got from the ranger station? Say about 8 p.m. or so.”
Jim nodded. He had several sets of those family band radios at home, but the sets they’d taken from the ranger station at Mount Rogers were better than anything he had. “I think those have a 35 mile range. That should cover us if we can get above the hills.”
“What channel?” Gary asked.
“How about Channel 10, set to privacy code 10 for starters. If someone is already on that channel and code, move down to Channel 10, privacy code 9, and so on until we find a good signal.”
“What about you, Randi?” Gary asked.
“I live close to a hill and I’m about ten miles from Jim. I can give it a shot.”
“Do you understand how to set the channel and privacy code?”
She nodded.
“If we can’t reach each other, we try again the next night at the same time until we’ve linked up. Got it?” Gary said.
“Almost there,” called the driver. “Coming up to the roadblock here in a minute. I can already see it.”
“Roadblock?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” the man’s wife replied. “There’s so many bad people out and about that they have put a couple of roadblocks in place to keep an eye on who’s running the roads.”
“We have guns,” Gary said. “Will that be a problem? Cause if it is, I’m jumping off now.”
“No, not at all – everybody has guns now. You’d have to be crazy to be out here without one.” The woman opened her purse to show them a polished chrome Taurus automatic. “I shoot .40 cal, myself.”
