An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (8 page)

     And there was absolutely nothing that any of them could possibly say that would have made the situation more palatable.

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     As he walked into the bedroom and saw Joyce laying there before him, Scott’s legs turned to putty. He fell to his knees by her side and started sobbing almost uncontrollably.

     “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have left. I should have been by your side. I shouldn’t have left you here to fend for yourself.”

     He almost took his gloves off to feel the softness of her cheek one last time. But no. He couldn’t risk it. He knew that the others would be handling her body during the burial process. He couldn’t take a chance that a germ left behind from his hand would somehow live long enough to infect someone else.

     One death was enough. Was far too much. They didn’t need any more agony.

     So instead, Scott lay next to her, as he’d done hundreds of times before. At her side, his head against her shoulder, his arm across her waist.

     “It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” he said. “I know we met late in life. I knew we were both seasoned long before we laid eyes on each other. But I still wanted to be your
knight in shining armor. I wanted to give you the little house with the white picket fence and live happily ever after with you. I wanted to see you happy and vibrant and make you laugh every day of your life.

     “I never wanted to see you like this. I am so, so sorry.”

     It was another half hour before he could break himself away from her. He’d have stayed longer, but he knew he was inconveniencing everyone else by making them wait outside in the sun.

     He kissed her on the forehead, through the mask. But that was okay. He wanted to remember her skin as warm and soft, instead of the coldness he knew it had become.

     He stood and looked down upon her. He sobbed for a moment, then brushed the tears aside.

     There would be plenty of time for that later.

     After a final long look at the woman he loved, he said, “I love you, sweetheart. I’ll see you again on the other side.”

     Then he turned and walked out of the room.

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     Just before nightfall, the four visitors walked out the gate again. Tom and Jordan had already placed sleeping bags, camping gear and provisions outside the compound.

     It was decided that the four would camp just outside the
fence for the night. They still had Scott’s radio, with a fresh set of batteries, and one of them would monitor the radio all night in case any of the ugliness came back. They had their weapons with them, cleaned and ready to fire, and all their magazines were reloaded.

     Just in case there were more of Pike’s allies planning a
follow-up raid.

     Tom himself took the security detail that night. The side of his face Hannah had plucked seventeen pieces of glass from was on fire anyway. He knew he’d get no sleep. So he might as well be up.

     Jordan, who like Sara had done a lot of growing in the previous year, considered himself a man now. And he’d proven it lately as well. He stepped up and offered to take the night security detail off Tom’s hands.

     But he was denied.

     “I’m getting old, Jordan. I get winded these days, doing things that used to come easy for me. Tomorrow, come sunrise, one of us is going to have to dig a grave. I can do it, but you can do it much faster. And it won’t wear you plumb out, like it would do to me. I need for you to get a good night’s sleep so you can do the heavy lifting tomorrow.”

    
Jordan couldn’t argue. The older man made sense.

     As he turned and walked away, Tom smiled and called behind him.

     “Hey, Jordan?”

     “Yes, sir?”

     “When you get upstairs, and lay yourself next to that pretty little wife of yours, don’t you be thinking you can bump uglies all night long and still have the strength to dig a grave tomorrow.”

    
Jordan laughed. The old guy might be losing his strength. But he still had his sense of humor.

     And after they’d all just been through, it sure felt good to laugh just a little.

     Outside the wall, there was no laughter or joy. The mood was decidedly somber. It was still a little early in the season for the mosquitoes to be out, so they slept in the open.

     Cowboy style, Tom Haskins called it. Like the old days.

     Oh, there were tents available. The Walmart truck they’d brought into the yard the previous summer had several of them on it, and they were stored in one of the sheds.

     The trouble was, if they came under surprise attack in the middle of the night by a second wave of outlaws, getting out of a tent was just another thing that would slow them down. At a time when every split second might be the difference between life and death.

     Randy and Robbie fell fast asleep, Robbie gently snoring a soothing rhythm that under other circumstances might lull the others to sleep. But neither Scott nor John would get much sleep this night, and for completely different reasons.

     Scott because he was filled with guilt and blamed himself for Joyce’s death. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her lifeless body. When he looked up at the heavens above him he pictured her in his mind, taking a fatal bullet to the head, then falling backwards onto the floor.

     John could easily have slept, knowing now that Hannah and the girls were safe and in good health. But he needed to be there for his friend.

     The two of them talked long into the night, barely above a whisper
, listening to the turkey buzzards in the darkness, fighting and squawking over the bodies of the bad men in the fields around them.

     They talked about life in general, and why it was that when things were finally looking up, th
ey could turn so terribly tragic again.

     They talked about Joyce herself. John learned
her life history that night, her talents and flaws and what a wonderful woman she was.

     And lastly, they talked about God, and whether He really existed. And why He would take someone as good as wonderful as Joyce, yet let all the other bad men of the world live on. To torment others who committe
d no crime other than try to eke out a meager living.

     Sometime after three a.m., they finally faded away, Scott first and John not long behind him. John waited until he heard several minutes of silence, then Scott’s deep steady breathing. Once he was sure Scott was out for the night, he allowed himself to join him.

     At five thirty, Tom heard someone clattering around in the kitchen, and smelled coffee brewing. A few minutes later Linda came to the control center, walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around him.

     He asked, “Should I ask who it is?”

     “It’s your horribly ugly and disfigured girlfriend.”

     He never took his eyes off the monitors. If a second wave
of bandits was coming, it might be a good tactic to attack this time of day, with the rising sun at their backs.

     “I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else. I don’t have an ugly
girlfriend. The only girlfriend I have is named Linda, and she is incredibly beautiful and sexy and sensuous.”

     She kissed him on the back of the head and said, “Thank you for that. I so love you.”

     “Well, I so love you too.”

     “Who’s coming on to relieve you at six, and why did you volunteer to do an all-nighter?”

     “Sara is going to relieve me, and I wanted to be awake in case there was a follow-up attack during the night. There are few things worse than having a gun battle against ornery outlaws when you’ve just been rousted out of bed and you’re still half asleep.”

     “I hope you don’t have so much experience at shooting outlaws first thing in the morning to be speaking from
first hand knowledge.”

     “Well… no. But I reckon it to be so.”

     Linda smiled.

     “You reckon it to be so, huh? I love the way you talk Texan. There’s something… rustic and rugged about it.”

     “Better’n talkin’ like a damned Yankee.”

     “Well, yeah, I guess I can’t argue with that.”

     “I can still hear clangin’ and bangin’ in the kitchen. Who’s in there besides you?”

     “Hannah and her girls. We’re making breakfast for our guests.”

     “Oh, so now only the guests get to eat?”

     “You know what I mean, you crazy old coot.”

     He lifted his head and kissed her.

     “Well, you’d better get a move on. They’re starting to stir.”

     She looked at screen six, and sure enough could see Randy as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and ran off into the brush to relieve himself. Scott and Robbie were still in their bags, but sitting up and talking.

     John was the only one still out.

     “I’ll have Sara bring you a plate if it’s finished before you get off shift, or you can eat outside with us.”

     “I’d rather eat with you, my beautiful princess.”

     She smiled again.

     And it felt good. More th
an anything, she needed a few smiles to get herself back on track.

-15-

     Both picnic tables were set within half an hour, and Hannah called the men outside the fence.

     “
I’ve unlocked the gate, and I’m backing away. Come on in and have some grub.”

     Scott’s first thought, of course, was of Joyce.

     “Linda spent the night with her, Scott, so she wouldn’t be alone. Jordan is up there with her now. He said he’s not hungry anyway. Eat some breakfast and then he’ll step out so you can spend more time with her if you want.”

     “Thank you, dear. I’d like that.”

     What should have been a celebratory homecoming was again somber and quiet. No one said much during the meal, but there were a lot of looks of longing between the two groups. Hannah would have given almost anything to hold John again, even for a brief moment.

     But the one thing she wouldn’t give, couldn’t give, was her daughters’ health. So she stayed far away from her husband.

     She told the others at her table, “Believe it or not, I think this is worse than when he was gone. Then I couldn’t see him, and it was easier to put him out of my mind. It’s maddening to see him over there and not be able to go running to him.”

     She didn’t know it, but John was expressing pretty much the same sentiment to the men at his own table.

     It was a busy and stressful day for everyone. While Scott and the other visitors were gathering the bodies of the outlaws, Hannah and Linda were preparing Joyce for burial.

    
Jordan dug two graves. The first was for old Blue, and he and Tom buried him in a shady spot under the eave of the house. It was his favorite spot in the yard, and Tom thought it fitting he should spend eternity there.

     While
Jordan was digging a grave for Joyce, Tom and Zachary went to the workshop to build a casket for her. It was plain, yet sturdy. She’d have appreciated the workmanship the men put into it.

     In the mid-afternoon, the men outside the wall had finished the grizzly task of gather
ing Tony Pike and the others. Their first plan was to bury them. But then John had a better idea.

     As a warning to others, they carried them through the break in the fence and through Tom’s property, out to the highway where they’d parked their patrol car.

     And there, on the edge of the dirt berm which blocked the access road to Tom’s place, they lined them up, side by side, in a rather grotesque and macabre display.

     It reminded Scott of photographs he’d seen of the old west, when a gang of outlaws would b
e shot dead, then posed upright in coffins for the town photographer.

     Scott had
found an old hand saw and enough materials in Tom’s work shed to fashion a crude sign. It read:

THESE MEN

WERE WARNED TO KEEP OUT

AND IGNORED THE WARNING.

LEARN FROM

THEIR MISTAKE.

     He shoved the sign into the berm next to the bodies. Then they stood back and admired their handiwork.

     John asked, “Do you think it’ll keep others away?”

     Scott gave pause and answered, “I hope so. But if it doesn’t, I don’t mind killing a hundred more. If that’s what it takes to keep from losing any more of our own.”

     The men took a rest break under an old oak tree in Tom’s front yard, before going to retrieve the Bobcat.

     After being allowed to creep unattended into the brush, the machine had driven over Tony Pike’s head and kept going. A hundred yards later it finally got stuck in a bar ditch, and ran until it exhausted all its fuel.

     They planned to get Tom’s old F-100 farm tractor and use it to tow it out of the ditch, refuel it, and then put it back in the corn field.

     But it would have to sit in the ditch a little bit longer.

     Linda called on the radio.

     “We’ll be ready in about twenty minutes or so. Why don’t you guys start heading over this way?

-16-

     The group had tossed around dozens of ideas. Some they discarded outright, others they tried and then discarded. Still other ideas they kept.

     They wanted to make this, the first funeral service at the camp, dignified and respectful. Yet they wanted it to be something that would have touched Joyce’s heart- that
would
touch Joyce’s heart. For there wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that she was up there watching.

     The casket wouldn’t fit in the house, because it wouldn’t make the turn into the kitchen without standing it upright.
That would have been okay when it was empty. But taking it out that way, with Joyce’s body inside it, just would not do.