Defiance (The Defending Home Series Book 1) (6 page)

He drew in a lungful of oxygen and felt his nose twitch. There was a downright nasty odor floating through the air. In the cot next to him, a morbidly obese man lay sleeping. Zach swung his legs over the edge, his nose buried into the crook of his elbow.

Even his breathing, which had been such a challenge when they’d wheeled him in, was flowing smoothly in and out of his lungs. He clapped his free hand to his forehead, surprised at how cool it felt to the touch.

With that, he rose on a pair of shaky legs, reaching out for an IV stand to brace himself.

With this new, higher angle, the world around him was starting to look much different. He saw there wasn’t only less activity within the medical tent, there was no activity. Turning to the fat man lying next to him, he made another realization. The guy wasn’t sleeping—he was dead, his face purple and swollen, along with the rest of his bloated corpse.

Zach staggered out of the tent, still wearing his hospital gown, wondering why he of all people had been spared. A debate was ping-ponging back and forth inside his head. Wrappers from discarded medical supplies rolled across his bare feet, nudged indifferently by the wind.

A few feet away, an ambulance sat parked with its doors open. He approached, somehow expecting the warden’s booming voice to stop him dead in his tracks. This was all a test to see if Zach was stupid enough to escape from prison with only eight months left before his parole hearing. But the warden’s voice never came.

Zach swung around back and closed the ambulance’s doors one at a time before making his way to the driver’s side. The keys were in the ignition. He slid behind the wheel and turned the vehicle on. The engine purred to life and somehow that brought the clear image of his son’s face into view. Not the way Colton looked now, but the tearful face of the ten-year-old boy who had watched him driven away in a police car. Hopefully Colton was still in Arizona, living with the good-for-nothing woman who’d gotten Zach locked behind bars in the first place. But Zach didn’t hold that against his son. He wondered—no, he prayed—Colton had stayed safe in the face of all this craziness.

Zach threw the ambulance into gear, cranked the wheel to the right and stepped on the gas. The vehicle lurched forward, throwing him about. He was driving over uneven ground, along the edge of the football field, heading for the road up ahead, the one he hoped would take him home to see his son. 

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I
n a patch of open terrain behind the house, Dale was bringing Duke through a series of drills. The glaring sun hung in the middle of the sky, baking them in the searing desert heat. Thick drops of sweat rolled down Dale’s face and back. He cupped the straw from his CamelBak water pack, brought it to his lips and drew in a long sip. Well water could sometimes taste awful, but the stuff he pulled up from the ground was always cool and great-tasting.

Thirty feet away, the dog sat watching him intently. Dale held his hand up, then quickly curled his fingers into a tight fist, the signal for concealment. At once Duke lowered himself close to the ground, his back end raised slightly, ready to spring. Dale pointed to the wooden dummy, wrapped with pads, and Duke let out a single loud bark before charging and snatching the arm in his powerful jaws. A short whistle from Dale made Duke stand down. His eyes darted between his master and the potential threat.

Dale had first brought Duke home from the pound a month after his wife had passed away. Originally, he’d purchased the dog for Brooke, with the intention of keeping her company and to help protect the house. She’d been a high school student at the time and Dale had spent long hours at Teletech, working eighteen-hour shifts as a floor manager. But as it turned out, Dale and Duke had soon become fast friends. It was a bond that was hard to describe to anyone who’d never shared their lives with a pet, a complete and unwavering devotion. Duke would lay down his life for Dale and without the slightest hesitation.

Their last pet, a brown Lab named Daisy, had died three years earlier and the animal’s passing had seriously affected Julie. Enough so that they’d made the decision to never get another dog.

But as they said, when men made plans, fate had a way of laughing.

Dale craved order the way people on TV nowadays craved attention and adulation. He liked knowing where things were and keeping them in their proper place. When he set his mind to something, he muscled through until he accomplished that goal. But as the years had peeled off the calendar, Dale had also begun to realize that only a fool refused to change his mind in light of changing circumstances. Adaptability was the key. Which was why when he’d lost his job at Teletech, he’d made a point of greatly increasing his level of self-sufficiency—a decision that would not only cut down on the money leaving his pocket, but would also help to insulate him from the growing winds of unrest he sensed brewing in the world more and more with every passing day. This house, the land around it and the more than adequate resources it contained were something of a port within a storm, a shield from everyone else’s problems.

His tongue wagging in the heat, Duke let out a single bark, as if to say,
We’re not done here.

Smiling, Dale let out a short whistle by curling his tongue against the palate of his mouth and then snapped the fingers on his left hand. Duke immediately lunged, sinking his teeth around the soft leathery knob between the dummy’s legs. The dog growled, his claws digging into the dusty ground as he shook his head and tried to tear the knob free. It was a devastating move against any man who wasn’t wearing a cup. Even the sight of Duke thrashing about was enough to make Dale’s eyes water. He gave Duke the order to release, reached into his pocket and handed him a treat. Duke gobbled it down while Dale scratched him in his favorite place behind his right ear.

“Good boy,” he said, grabbing the water bowl and setting it down in front of him. Duke waited for permission before diving in and lapping up the precious liquid.

That was when Brooke appeared next to him wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a basket of juicy-looking tomatoes cradled under her arm. “He’s a lethal killing machine,” she said. She was wearing her gardening clothes, her knees marked with dark soil.

“He can be,” Dale replied. “But he can also be gentle enough to play with a child.”

She smiled weakly and Dale could see that something was bothering her.

“You know it won’t last forever,” he said. “Eventually, Shane, Nicole and her parents will need to set themselves up in their own place.”

Brooke nodded, her dark hair tangled at the back. She couldn’t look any more like her mother if she tried.

“I think you got your green thumb from her.” He was eyeing the tomatoes.

“That’s not what I was going to say. I actually like having them here. Ann was with me in the garden before and Uncle Shane’s so funny, he’s always got me in stitches. Plus, he and Colton get along well. But I didn’t mean them, I meant this whole situation we’re in.”

Duke nudged her free hand and Brooke started petting him.

“I’m not sure how to answer that, Brooke,” Dale said, trying to measure his words. “Seems from everything I’m hearing on the shortwave, our country isn’t the only one that’s been affected. The cities were hit the hardest, especially with people trying to flee to the country all at once.”

“So I guess I’m never going back to Arizona State, then.” She was a sophomore studying for a degree in business. 

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”

“Really? You always said you hated that I was studying business. You thought I should go into nursing.”

“I didn’t want you becoming another Hugh Reid, stepping on the heads of hard-working people just to pad the bottom line.”

“You never did trust me.”

“Of course I trust you, Brooke. Don’t talk like that. It’s more that I know how money and power can act like a drug to blind folks from what’s really important. I never wanted you to become one of those executive sleazebags.”

She laughed. “You make it sound inevitable.”

“Some things are,” he replied. “And right now, what’s inevitable is that people in cities large and small are running out of food and water and they’re starting to panic.”

“We’re hanging on. Do you think they’ll come down from Tucson and try to steal our stuff?”

“It’s already started happening throughout the country,” Dale told his daughter. Hard as it was, he felt it was important to tell her the truth he’d learned scanning his shortwave radio band. “Every disaster scenario creates a different reaction. A cyber-attack that suddenly kills the power grid could mean the highways become clogged with fleeing cars.

“But this version of the swine flu is different. The disease has kept many people locked in their homes, afraid to venture out with the high risk of becoming infected. As the population has thinned out, those who survived have followed the path of least resistance, which is to say they take whatever’s left behind by the dead. But eventually even that will run out and some will turn to taking from those around them. Before long, even that pool of resources will dry up and they’ll push out from the cities in search of new areas to search for supplies. Those who make it into the country will face a tougher challenge than they anticipated, many of them turning to crime as they seek out farms they can plunder.”

Duke sniffed at Dale’s hand and he fed him another treat.

“If that’s true, then why not here?” she asked, switching the basket to her other arm. In spite of the hat, the skin at the back of her neck had grown pink from the sun.

“The desert,” he explained in about as simple a way as he could. “It’s one of the toughest environments to live in. Those fleeing the city who either run out of gas or end up on the side of the road with a flat are as good as dead.”

Brooke glanced down at the tomatoes and then back at him. “That man who came asking for water,” she began.

Dale knew where she was going and had no intention of rehashing the conversation.

“You told him FEMA and the military would be here soon to help take care of him. Do you really believe that?”

Dale always made a point of being honest with her, but that rule didn’t apply to those who weren’t family. He drew in a deep breath along with another drink of water. “I don’t think the government’s going to show up any time soon,” he admitted.

“So you lied?”

He hesitated, then slowly nodded. “One thing you need to understand, honey. There was no way to know whether the man intended to do us harm. If we start becoming the watering station for the county, we’ll be putting ourselves in serious danger. I hope help shows up soon, I really do, but we need to look after ourselves first.”

“We’re already in danger,” she said.

As if on cue, Dale heard the sound of vehicles approaching. He rushed past the pumphouse and watched as three patrol cars from the sheriff’s office pulled into his lane.

“Tell Shane to get out here right away,” he ordered his daughter, sensing something bad was about to happen.

She broke into a run, struggling against the basket of tomatoes.

“And tell him to bring my shotgun.”

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T
he cruisers stopped halfway up the drive. Facing them thirty feet away were Dale, Shane, Walter and Colton. Dale’s hands held fast to his Mossberg while Shane carried a pistol in the seat of his pants and an AR. Both of them hoped the mere sight of their weapons would get the point across that they meant business.

Brooke, Nicole and Ann remained inside, Duke by their side. If things got ugly, Dale didn’t want to risk any of them getting hurt.

Still in his cruiser, Randy got on his loudspeaker. “Dale, tell your people to put their guns down, would you?”

“I’ll be happy to, Randy,” Dale replied. “But only after you and your boys go first.”

“We’re only here to talk,” the sheriff added. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

“For some reason, I’m having a hard time believing you. If you want us to lay down, then you and your men gotta do the same.”

Randy got onto his radio, speaking in private to the deputies in the other cars. A quick scan revealed Sandy wasn’t among them, a fact which left Dale feeling relieved. After a moment, Randy and three other deputies exited the cruisers. In turn, each of them removed their gun belts and set them on the front seat of their respective vehicles. When Dale was satisfied they’d followed their end of the bargain, he collected the weapons on his end and set them down under a nearby juniper tree.

“So what can we do for you?” Dale asked.

“Don’t play stupid, you know exactly why we’re here,” Deputy Clay spat, only to be nudged by his brother, the sheriff. With tattoos stretching up the back of his neck and peeking out the brown sleeves of his cop’s shirt, Clay looked more like a drug dealer than he did a deputy. It was a comparison that wasn’t far off either because the Gaines family was the second richest in town—second only to Hugh Reid, of course. But the point wasn’t so much the money as it was the boredom and lack of direction that sometimes accompanied it, especially for younger people.

Years earlier, Clay had been on Sheriff Joe Wilcox’s radar. Clay was known to buy and sell marijuana, but it was his growing interest in the harder stuff which had really worried Joe. A handful of misdemeanors for possession had never been enough to send Clay away for good. But the real obstacle was the family money and the high-priced lawyers they could call in to make the whole thing go away.

The lesson for Dale in all of this, watching as he had from the sidelines, was that money represented a form of absolute power. And absolute power corrupted absolutely.

“I’m here on a peaceful mission, Dale,” Randy started to say. “You’ve got something underneath your land that the town of Encendido and the remaining folks living here need very badly. Until the government shows up with the proper equipment, the clean water in your well’s the last hope for getting anything drinkable in this parched Godforsaken place.”