AFTER THE DUST SETTLED (Countdown to Armageddon Book 2) (12 page)

     “You expected it to cause me pain and be bloody.”

     “Well, yes. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was dreading that part, because I didn’t want to hurt you in any way. So I was glad that you were able to… do it without pain.

     “But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me wonder. And then you made that comment a few minutes ago…”

     She felt bad for him. He was trying so hard to find words that would answer his questions without hurting her.

     She put her finger to his lips to stop him. Then she drew a deep breath.

     “This is very hard for me. But it’s something you need to know. Because it’s part of my past, and a very big part of my life and why I’m the emotional wreck I am sometimes. It may make you hate me, but you need to know.”

     “I could never hate you. Never. No matter what you’re going to say.”

     She smiled. He was so sweet.

     “I was not a virgin that night. You already knew that, or at least suspected it. But it’s not what you think.”

     She drew another breath before she went on. This was going to be harder than she thought.

     “When I said that I left a note for my parents, to tell them I was going with you… I lied. But I swear, it’s the only time I’ve ever lied to you. I promise.”

     “But… I saw the letter.”

     “No, you saw an empty envelope that I said had a letter in it. But it didn’t. I left behind an empty envelope with their names on it.”

     “But why?”

     “Because the last thing in the world I wanted was for them to know where I went. To find me. This… electronic thing that caused so much damage to the world is a terrible thing. But to me, it also presented something I’d been praying for, for a very long time. It finally gave me a chance to escape.”

     She paused, and a tear fell from her left eye.  He reached over and wiped it with his thumb. But he didn’t interrupt her. He’d wait patiently while she found the words she was looking for.

     “I haven’t seen my father- my real father, since the day I started kindergarten. I remember being so excited that day. Mom and Dad dropped me off, and walked me into the school and to my classroom. They spoke to my teacher and then asked me twenty times if I was okay to be left alone with the teacher. But I was excited. I said, ‘heck yeah!’

     “I think leaving me there was harder on them than it was on me.

     “Mom picked me up that afternoon. I remember being so excited, and talking nonstop all the way home. I had so much to share about my first day, and I couldn’t wait to share it all with my Daddy when I got home.

     “But Daddy wasn’t there. Mom wouldn’t tell me where he went. She just said that he decided he didn’t love us anymore and no longer wanted to live with us. I remember going from so happy to so sad. I cried myself to sleep that night and couldn’t figure out what I did to make my Daddy hate me.

     “To this day, I don’t know where my father is. Mom told me once that he died in prison. But then another time, later on, she said he was living up north somewhere. So I don’t know if he’s dead, or just doesn’t want anything to do with me. And I still don’t know what I did to make him not love me any more.”

     She stopped. The tears started to flow freely now, and
Jordan reached out and held her.

     Linda and Joyce watched from the kitchen window. It was obvious to them that the discussion was serious, but they respected the kids enough to not interfere.

     “You don’t have to say any more, baby. It doesn’t matter. I still love you and always will.”

     For a full thirty seconds there was dead silence between them. He wiped her tears when they fell, and ran his fingers through her long chestnut hair.

     “No. You need to know this. It’s a big part of me.”

    More silence.

     “A couple of years ago my mother and I argued. I called her a tramp. She didn’t say anything, but she looked hurt. Then she just turned and walked out of the room. I felt very bad, and I apologized the next day.

     “But then I got to thinking, and despite how the word hurt her, I honestly couldn’t come up with a different word that described the type of life she was living. Does that make me a hateful bitch?”

     “No, baby. Not at all.”

     “She’s an alcoholic. I don’t know if I ever told you that. She’s always gone on these drinking binges occasionally. They really caused her problems. She got arrested three times for driving drunk and kept getting fired from jobs.

     “Finally she just quit working altogether. She found a better way to pay the bills. In the years after that she found a steady stream of scumbags who would move in with us for a few months and pay our bills and buy our food for us. Then one by one, she’d get drunk and fight with them and then they’d get pissed off and leave. But within a few days, she’d always bring home another one.

     “Then, three years ago, she found Jesse. I thought Jesse was different. He didn’t do drugs, and he didn’t ride a motorcycle. He was a businessman, and I guess a successful one. He put money down on a house and made the mortgage payments, and we finally had a home we could call our own. We finally had nice furniture and nice cars and nice clothes.

     “And with Jesse, he didn’t mind when Mom got mad at him and got drunk and called him names. Even when she told him to get the hell out, he just let it go in one ear and out the other.”

     “So that’s good. She finally found a guy who loved her enough to stay.”

     Sara laughed. But it wasn’t a happy laugh. It was more a laugh of irony. Like she knew the punch line to a joke that no one else knew.

     “No. You don’t understand. He didn’t
stay for her. He stayed for me.

     “The first time I was alone with Jesse was about a month into their relationship. He told her he’d cook steaks for dinner, if she would go to the grocery store and get stuff for a fresh salad. He said he’d babysit me while she was gone.

     “He molested me. Made me do things I didn’t want to do. And he told me that if I said anything to her, he’d snap my neck like a twig.

     “It got worse from there. He would actually encourage my mom to get drunk. Even though he knew she was an alcoholic. He’d push drinks on her, saying ‘here, try this new cocktail I heard about,’ or ‘one more won’t hurt you.’

     “And two or three times a week he’d get her to drink so much that she’d pass out cold. And then he’d make me take a bath with him, or even worse.

     “He finally took my virginity a year or so ago. And once he passed that point, he wouldn’t stop. He tried to make her pass out almost every night. And he would brutalize me for hours in my bed.”

     Jordan finally found his tongue.

     “Oh, my God! Why didn’t you tell your mom?”

     “I finally found the courage to. I was terrified that she’d tell him, and he’d carry out his threats to kill me. But she told me never to say anything. I think she had already known for a very long time.

     “She forbade me from telling anyone. She said the reason we had nice things and a nice house was because of Jesse. And if I told anyone they’d put him in jail, and we’d lose everything. And we’d be homeless and living in a car somewhere.

     “Lately, it was happening with her consent. He’d make a pass at her and she’d say she wasn’t in the mood, and she’d make me go to him instead. And she’d cook dinner or watch her shows while Jesse was abusing me in the next room, and she didn’t give a damn. She’d even turn up the television to cover up the noise.

     “I learned a long time ago how to escape it in my mind. I’d try to remember Bible verses or fairy tales from when I was little, or all the words to a song. Anything I could think of, so I wouldn’t have to think of what was going on at the time.”

     She pushed back from Jordan and looked him in the eyes, as though to reveal a great secret.

     “But here’s the thing. I never had the chance to escape for real, physically, until that day the electronic thing hit and all the power went out. It was a terrible thing for the whole world. But it was also my one chance for freedom.

     “And I damn sure wasn’t going to give them the chance to come and find me. For things to go back the way they were. That’s why I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

     For a full minute he didn’t know what to say. So he just held her close while she sobbed into his shoulder.

     Then he whispered, “I’ll promise you this. I will never let anyone hurt you again. And if Jesse ever shows his face around here looking for you, I will tear him apart with my bare hands.”

-22
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     It was seventy five days since they’d started planting the corn in the one acre field north of the compound. According to the planting schedule that came with the seed, that meant it was time to harvest.

     It had taken almost a week to plant the seeds, one at a time, by hand. Everyone had pitched in to help, switching off every couple of hours. It was back breaking work, and it just wouldn’t make sense for one or two people to endure all the pain and misery alone.

     They’d started planting on the first row on the west side of the field. Then worked their way to the east. Since the plants on the west side were a week older than the ones on the east side, they’d start their harvest in the same manner.

     Just as they’d had no seed planter to begin the project, they also had no harvester to finish it. This part of the process would also be done by hand. And the harvest was a lot easier than the planting. Mainly because it didn’t involve crawling around on one’s hands and knees.

     Tom Haskins started by walking down the outside row, cutting off each ear of corn at its base, then tossing it into the back of the Gator. Zachary drove the Gator at Tom’s pace as Tom walked along. And Zach had a blast, because he loved driving the Gator.

     Tom hadn’t been around for the planting, but he complimented Scott and the others on their handiwork. The rows were straight, and the plants were evenly spaced. It was unusual, he’d said, for a crop so planted to be spaced out so well.

     Tom was in charge of the harvest, because he’d been a farmer and rancher for most of his life. He knew what he was doing, and the others were just faking it. So when he offered to head up the project, he got no arguments.

     The rows were a little over a hundred yards long. By the time they made it
halfway to the other end, the back of the machine was heaped to capacity.

     Tom hopped into the passenger seat.

     “Okay, boy. Let’s see if you can drive this thing over to the feed barn without killing anybody.”

     Once at the feed barn they lowered the tailgate and unclipped the front of the tilt bed. It had no hydraulic lift, so Tom got on one side and Scott got on the other. They manhandled it to dump almost three hundred pounds of corn ears onto the barn floor.

     “Okay, you guys ready to husk and debone these suckers?”

     Everyone else was in the barn, ready to help, except for Joyce, who was taking her turn at the security desk.

     Scott had purchased two manual corn shuckers at a farm auction when they were building the compound a year before. He didn’t have a clue how to use them, but figured he’d learn on the fly. One thing he liked about them was that they were manual in the literal sense of the word, in that they required no electrical power.

     At Tom’s direction, they placed the machines facing opposite directions, one on each side of the barn. Between them was about twenty feet of open floor space.

     “Okay, the first thing you ladies need to figure out is deciding how many ears you want to keep whole. Set that many aside and pull the husks off of them, then put them in plastic bags in your chest freezer. That’s what you’ll cook every time you want to make corn on the cob with supper. Once you put those aside, we’re going to husk and shuck the rest of the ears. Then we’ll dry out the corn and store it in sacks. You guys ready?”

     “Yes.”

     “Okay, we need two people on the shucking machines. Who wants to volunteer?”

    
Jordan said, “I’ll do one.”

     Linda didn’t say anything, but went and stood by the other one.

     Tom grabbed an ear and held it up so Sara and Scott could see what he was doing.

     “Okay, you husk each ear just like you’re peeling a banana. Just grab the husk and pull it all the way down to the bottom, and keep pulling until it comes off. Throw the husks in a pile. It’ll make good cattle feed. Throw the naked ear in a pile next to the machine. You’ll have to be pretty quick to stay ahead of the deboners, because they’ll move pretty fast. Let’s peel a few and get a little pile started.

     On her second ear, Sara suddenly squealed.

     “Of, I forgot to tell you about the corn worms. They’re pretty common. And they don’t eat much. So just knock em on the floor and we’ll sweep ‘em up and feed ‘em to the pigs.”

     Sara shook the cob in her hand until a pale white worm about an inch long fell to the floor.

     “Ewww, gross,” she said as she kicked it to one side as though it were toxic.