The Most Miserable Winter, page 17
part #14 of Alone Series
“No, not never mind. And I could be wrong about the brother. I never met him, so I can’t say for sure. In fact, I can’t even be sure he was her only brother. Remember, I never went to her house, so I don’t know if she had another brother other than him.
“Heck, for all I know she might have a whole bunch of brothers. Why on earth are you asking? Are you looking for a boyfriend or something?”
“Hell no, I’m not looking for a boyfriend, smartass. I’m looking to form a gang.”
Angela’s mouth dropped.
“What? A gang? Are you nuts?”
“Well, maybe gang is the wrong word. Maybe a band of brothers and sisters.”
“But why? I mean, we’re still alive after more than a year. Why would you want to change things now?”
Kristy started to cry. She couldn’t help it. The pent-up tears inside her just started to flow.
Chapter 52
Angela went to her sister and consoled her.
She’d been doing that a lot lately. She didn’t rush her, just holding onto her and biding her time until the tears stopped and she was able to speak again.
“I was confronted by a man with a knife the last time I went into that house.”
“What? Did he hurt you?”
“No. I’m okay, I promise. I… I got away from him. But it was a very close call. I was lucky, and since then I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it.”
“And…?”
“And it made me realize that we’re not still alive after a year and a half because I’m good at gathering and willing to go places where most people won’t go.
“We’re still alive because we’ve been lucky. That’s the only reason…”
“But I don’t…”
“Hold on, Angie. Let me finish. Over the last few months I’ve seen several groups of people. Teenagers, mostly. But some have a couple of adults with them too. I’ve seen the way they operate. They set up armed lookouts in the street to watch their backs while they’re scrounging, and they search three or four houses at the same time.
“They need more food because they have more mouths to feed, but they’re way more efficient than I’ve been and cover a lot of ground faster. And because they have a security system they don’t have to worry about somebody lying in wait to rob them when they come out of a house.”
“And you think this is a good idea? To join one of these… gangs, or bands of orphans, or whatever?”
“I’ve thought a lot about it and yes. I’m pretty sure.
“But I don’t want to join somebody else’s group. I want to establish one of our own. There are a couple of people I went to school with that I think I can trust. If I can find them, that is.
“From what I’ve seen there are a lot of kids and teens out there who are like us. They’re alone for one reason or another. Or they have adults who don’t scrounge and send them out instead. Maybe their folks are dead or sick or too weak to walk the streets. I don’t know. But I’m thinking if we can find a half dozen other kids, or maybe even some adults… maybe if we can find a few people we can trust we can change the whole way we’re doing things.”
“But Kristy, I think we’ve been doing all right with just us…”
Kristy started to feel exasperated.
“Angie, you’re not listening. I almost died a couple of weeks ago. I had to kill a man to keep him from killing me.”
“You… killed a man?”
“Yes. I had to. If I hadn’t he’d have stabbed me to death. I wouldn’t have come home that day and you never would have known why.”
“I’m sorry. I knew something was tearing you up inside. I just…”
“Angie, we’ve got to try something different. We can’t just wait until our luck runs out.”
“So you want to go by Amy’s house and see if they want to join up with us?”
“Yes. I’ll go by my old friend Melissa’s house. It was just her and her mom. Her dad was in the Army stationed overseas somewhere. If he didn’t find a way back they might want to join us.
“And there was a guy friend of mine. Kinda nerdy but kinda cool too. I remember he said his mom died and he hated his dad. I remember he was into guns and went to the firing range with his friends on the weekends. I think I know where he lives.
“Do you know of anybody else, Angie? Anybody who might be having a rough time of it who might want to team up with us?”
Angela thought for a minute and almost shook her head.
Then she remembered another classmate. A classmate the school bus driver used to drop off just before she dropped off Angela. One block over and two blocks up.
“There was another girl. Beth Spear. She was always nice to me and shared her lunch with me sometimes when I had nothing to take because we were out of food. I always lied and told her I forgot my lunch, but I think she knew. She always said she wasn’t hungry and that her mom always packed way too much for her and told me to eat as much as I wanted.”
“Did she have any brothers or sisters?”
“I know she had a sister. About your age. Sometimes she’d be sitting in a porch swing with her boyfriend when Beth got off the bus.”
“Okay, we’ve got a list of several candidates. I want to get a group together before the winter storms come, and it’ll be soon. I saw ice crystals in our water supply the other morning when I went outside to start the boil. Do you remember where your friends Amy and Beth lived?”
“Sure. I think so.”
“Okay. Tomorrow we’ll make our run to the death house a little early. Then we’ll drop the food here so it’s safe. And then we’ll get back out and see if we can find some people to team up with.”
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Thank you for reading
ALONE, Part 14:
The Most Miserable Winter
Please enjoy this preview of
ALONE, Part 15:
An Unwelcome Homecoming
Dave got an unmistakable feeling of uneasiness as soon as they entered their old neighborhood in south San Antonio.
Everything looked familiar, yet something was decidedly different.
He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
For the previous hour there’d been almost nonstop chatter.
Dave pointed out the city park where they once picnicked.
They rode their bikes there when the girls were younger. Lindsey rode her own. A purple Barney the Dinosaur bike.
Beth was little then, and laughed out loud from the baby carrier behind Dave’s bike seat.
She loved feeling the wind in her hair and leaned out as far as possible to catch as much as she could.
Dave had forgotten that part. But now it came back to him. He smiled as he remembered how hard it was to keep from tipping over when Beth grew to almost three years old.
She still leaned far out, but was a chubby little girl then and weighed twice as much as she did the year before.
He remembered having to lean just a bit to the other side himself to stay balanced.
Over there was the convenience store they once walked to on hot summer days for ice cream.
Now every window was shattered, probably by looters in the early days of the blackout.
The owners had hammered plywood over the windows, but it did little good.
Nearly every piece of plywood had been pried back off again. Those which weren’t were covered in graffiti or kicked to pieces.
Still, that store fared better than the pizza restaurant next door. At some point it was burned to the ground.
The only proof the restaurant was ever there was the thirty foot tall Italian chef on the sign out front.
His name was Antonio and he still held a huge pepperoni pizza.
Antonio still stood sentinel over the site, and reminded passersby of better times.
“Well, the pizza there sucked anyway,” Beth said.
Beth was one who was never afraid of sharing her critiques or personal views, whether one asked her or not.
Lindsey, for once, agreed with her.
“Orlando’s was much better.”
Dave’s mouth watered.
Not for pizza, for he wasn’t a pizza fan.
But the tortellini Alfredo that the chef slapped onto a plate at Orlando’s was to die for.
He knew a lot of the staff at the restaurant socially, for the manager was a former Marine.
Every time the family went there for dinner Tony Morelli came to their table and joined them. He and Dave swapped stories from their days in the Corps. Tony bought him a beer or three.
Sarah usually had to drive the family back home, because she and Dave had had an agreement for years. He was allowed to drive after two beers and a full meal.
But no more than that.
It was no problem. Everyone had a good time, and Lindsey was right.
The food at Orlando’s was awesome.
They passed Beth’s elementary school.
Lindsey asked her if she wanted to go inside.
“I’ll go with you, little squirt. Just in case there’s any monsters hiding in the shadows waiting to grab you and eat you.”
Lind caught her father’s eye and winked, then added, “That way I can help them by holding you down.”
“Very funny, twerp,” Beth countered. “I stopped believing in monsters the day I discovered big sisters are ten times worse.
“Besides, I don’t think I’d like going in there. I think seeing the empty rooms would make me very sad.”
They passed the school by and ten minutes later turned the corner at the end of their street.
Dave got a bad feeling. Everything looked more or less the same, but something was decidedly different.
As they neared their house, Dave studied everything closely. He was looking for a hint… a clue… that would tell him what it was which had changed.
As the girls grew more and more excited about finally being home, he finally saw it.
The picture window in their front room was different.
The phony eviction notice Dave had so carefully placed in the corner of the window… it was gone.
“Keep walking,” he said, even as he winced because he knew he was ruining everyone’s homecoming.
“Something’s not right. Keep walking and don’t look at the house.”
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ALONE, Part 15:
An Unwelcome Homecoming
will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in May 2020
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If you enjoyed
ALONE, Part 14:
The Most Miserable Winter
you might also enjoy Darrell Maloney’s
The Cleansing
Our loveable but grumpy friend Frank Woodard is a detective, living the life of an ordinary citizen in Washington, D.C.
But not for long. One night his life becomes anything but ordinary. Over the span of just three seconds, fifty citizens fall dead in their tracks, killed instantly with no sign of trauma save a quarter-sized bruise directly over their sternums.
There are hundreds of witnesses, yet none of them saw a thing.
Frank’s struggle for answers makes him first a suspect, then a villain, then a hero. And the answers he seeks come, quite literally, from out of this world.
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The Cleansing
is available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
Here’s a preview…
This case was just what Frank Woodard needed to ease back into homicide division’s line of fire.
In this case, there was no wondering who the murderer might be. No witnesses who refused to cooperate. No family who was hiding key suspects. No instance where the murder weapon was destroyed, or was thrown into a deep river or canyon, or buried in a desert where it would never be found again.
Not at all. This murder took place inside a packed bar on a Saturday night. Two drunks started making passes at the same woman, who did nothing to discourage either of them. One thing led to another, words were exchanged and a line was crossed.
One pulled a four inch knife and told the other to leave.
The second man, bolstered by bravado supplied by the liquor he’d been swilling, refused.
It cost him his life.
The killer almost immediately realized he’d gone way too far. He handed the bartender the bloody knife and sat in a corner of the bar, head in hands, crying until the police showed up.
Over and over, he kept saying, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”
But sorry didn’t cut it. Not when another man lay dead in a puddle of blood senselessly shed.
There was a barroom of witnesses. Surveillance cameras captured the whole thing. And the killer confessed to the first officer on the scene. Told to shut up and listen, he did so. His Miranda rights were read to him, he waived them and confessed again.
This was what homicide detectives called a “quickie.”
It was open and shut. There would be no long drawn out investigation. No endless series of witnesses to interview. No long list of possible suspects to interrogate. No weeks-long trial or endless appeals.
Homicide detectives called it a “quickie” because once all the statements were taken, once all the witnesses were recorded, once the reports were filed, the case was considered closed.
It was the homicide equivalent of finding a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk on your way to work.
It seldom got any better than that.
Frank remembered back when he used the term “quickie” at a staff meeting.
His new lieutenant, freshly transferred in from the Robbery Division, was a looker. Tall and thin, with all the right curves in all the right places. It was impossible not to notice.
After introductions, the new lieutenant thanked the group for the warm welcome she was given and said she looked forward to working with each and every detective.
Then she asked each detective to give her a rundown on the cases they were working on.
When Frank’s turn came around he said, “I just wrapped up a double homicide, turned it over to the D.A. yesterday. We have him dead to rights. He’s confessed to avoid the death penalty. He’ll never see the light of day again.”
His new boss was impressed. Frank would have scored some brownie points if it had gone no further.
But Lieutenant Cutie Pie asked him, “Good work, detective. So what’s next for you?”
Frank said, “Right now, ma’am, I could really use a quickie. I’m so stressed after the last couple of cases I could use some relief.”
The room fell suddenly silent.
It was then and there that Frank realized he was getting old.
And that the younger detectives and the lieutenant understood the term “quickie” to have more than one meaning. Something having absolutely nothing to do with homicide cases.
That was in Bexar County, Texas some years before. Everyone got a good laugh at Frank’s expense, but no permanent harm was done. Frank and the lieutenant ended up having an excellent working relationship and were still good friends, even after he made the move east to Washington.
And she still liked ribbing him about it every chance she got.
The bar murder was a two day case at most. He could stretch it out to three just by taking his time doing the reports if he wanted to.
Frank was a two finger typer. In his early days in homicide it took him days to do reports. In those days he had an IBM Selectric, considered the Cadillac of typewriters. But for a detective who typed with two fingers, and who wasn’t the best speller in the world, it still took a while.
Department policy was that any report which had more than three corrections per page had to be redone.
And retyping a page that was three quarters done before the fourth mistake was struck was the pits.
Frank tried whiteout to hide some of the errors, but his supervisors wouldn’t accept it.
Then he tried pretending his words weren’t misspelled, but his bosses caught those as well.
Frank, more than anybody else in the department, was happy when typewriters went the way of the dinosaurs and personal computers started showing up on each man’s desk.
But he still typed with two fingers.
And it still took forever to type his reports.
So even after drawing a quickie case it took Frank two days, maybe three, to get everything typed up and submitted to the Assistant District Attorney.
But that was okay. He was back on the firing line, where he belonged.
Back doing what he loved to do… solving murders and throwing bad people in jail.
Making the streets safer for the good guys.
He was back in his element and happy as a clam.
That was about to change.
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If you enjoyed
ALONE, Part 14:
The Most Miserable Winter
you might also enjoy
Countdown to Armageddon
Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
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Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.
His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?
No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter that word might well be “average.”
If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.
And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.
