Red the First (6 page)

What a great little actor,
Red
thought.

“
We saw the truck
first.”

“
No you didn’t—we did!”
Michael’s voice sounded near tears.

“
Them’s the breaks,
kid.”

“
He’s a feisty little
thing,” one of the other men said. “I wonder how he’s gonna taste
char-broiled.”

“
Spicy, I bet.”

“
You’re not gonna broil me,”
Michael said. “That would be gross.”

“
Nah. Old people taste gross
broiled—gotta stew anyone over about twenty-five or thirty, but the
young ones are pretty good as friers.”

“
Like this little girl the
other week. After we took turns tenderizing her, she made for a
tasty rack of ribs.”

Red realized by their tone and
malicious laughter that they weren’t just trying to scare Michael;
they really did intend to turn him into a meal. They were like
overgrown house cats, torturing their prey before eating it. He
never felt so much rage and abhorrence.

“
Now!”

In one fluid motion, Red’s gun was out
of its holster. He pumped two of the guys with bullets. Michael
took care of the other two without any problems. Unfortunately,
this wasn’t the first kill for Red or Michael; all three members of
Red’s new family had needed to kill before. Elizabeth always got
quiet afterward. Michael, however, treated it like a walk through
the park.

He watched the boy get to his feet,
clumps of pulpy gray brain matter clinging to his straggly blond
hair. Blood had splattered across his face and clothing—Red’s too.
Michael went over to the fallen bodies to methodically search
through their pockets. “Slim Jims! And lighters too!” he cried out,
happily piling them up on the crumbling verge of the highway. He
slipped a bejeweled signet ring off one of the guy’s fingers and
slid it into his jeans pocket.

Michael chewed on a meat log, neatly
laying out the pilfered knives, guns and other prizes all in a
line. As the adrenaline wore off, the pain in Red’s head got worse
and he began to notice a secondary throbbing in his back. He could
barely straighten out his spine through the pain; he realized he
must have knocked a vertebrae out of place when he hit the ground
with Michael.

“
A truck, medical supplies,
weapons, a nice piece of string, fishing lures,” the boy went on
oblivious to Red’s pain. “By the way, when are you going to fix my
rod?”

“
Remind me when we get
back.”

“
Okay...two Kit Kat bars,
three lighters, an unopened 8-pack of AA batteries, five packs of
Juicy Fruit gum, an unopened pack of Pokémon cards, an aerosol can
of Cheddar Cheesy Product, an 18 karat gold ring, and the Slim
Jims,” Michael said through a mouthful of meat. “A pretty good
haul, I’d say.”

“
Yeah,” Red gave him a wary
glance, saddened how this harsh existence had hardened the
youngster’s conscience. “A good haul. Now, get behind the wheel and
turn the key when I tell you.”

After ten minutes of woozily peering
about underneath the hood of the truck, the sweat dribbling from
his forehead onto the engine block, and his head spinning—Red
tweaked a belt and shifted a bolt with his emerging new ability,
let it be,
and the engine roared to life. Michael scooted
over to the passenger side and they headed toward home.

Pulling into the driveway gave him a
sense of relief. First thing he was going to do, after freeing that
doctor from his ropes, was take a week-long nap. But when he got to
the back door, it was wide open. There was Dr. Patel sitting at the
kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying a piece of pie
with Elizabeth. The foolish woman had untied him.

Busy gabbing and laughing with the
doctor as if he were her new best friend, Elizabeth only glanced up
at Red as he stepped up onto the front porch, not noticing the
storm clouds forming in Red’s eyes. His fist had clenched into a
ball. The muscles in his jaw tensed. When he stepped through the
doorway, she stood up so fast her chair almost turned over. Dr.
Patel frantically rethreaded his hands through the rope, but it was
too late.

Michael trailed in behind him, covered
with blood, but all smiles.

“
Uh...” was all Elizabeth
could say. When she noticed the blood spattered liberally over the
both of them, her hands went to her mouth. “Oh, god, what
happened?”

“
Four guys jumped us,”
Michael said with a shrug, but the exuberant smile never left his
face. “And we took their Kit Kats and Slim Jims.” He generously
held them out to share.

“
Slim Jims,” Dr. Patel said,
his eyes lighting up. “Yum!”

“
I thought you were supposed
to be a doctor.” Feeling like his well-being had been usurped by
Slim Jims, Red’s face rankled into a frown. “Can’t you see I’m
wounded?”

“
Huh?” Michael’s happy
expression turned into confusion.

Red’s words altered the mood from
frivolous to frantic, sending Elizabeth and the doctor into motion.
Michael collapsed onto a kitchen chair, hugging himself, rocking
back and forth, humming a rhythmic lullaby.

Knowing that Michael was home safely,
Red finally gave himself permission to give into his weakness.
Unable to restrain the pain a moment longer, he allowed it to flood
through his body, graying the edges of his vision.

He woke upstairs in the bed. Covered
with a sheet, wearing only his underwear. His body was clean and
smelled like flowery soap but his head felt like it had been
through a meat grinder. Hands went to his temple to find a wad of
gauze.

“
Hi,” a soft little whisper
came in his ear. It was Michael.

“
Uh, hi,” Red said groggily.
“How long have I been asleep?”

“
Two days—off and on. You
got shot in the head and the back. Good thing Dr. Patel was
here.”

“
If he hadn’t showed up, we
wouldn’t have went for the truck...never mind. Yeah, good thing he
was here.”

“
I’m glad you didn’t die.
Zena would have been scared without you.”

“
You would have taken care
of her for me though—right?”

“
Of course. Want me to call
her?”

“
No, I’m not ready for a
hundred and ten pounds of lonely dog. Where’s
Elizabeth?”

“
Out in the garden. Dr.
Patel is downstairs though. Want me to get him?”

“
Please.”

A few minutes later, Dr. Patel came to
sit next to the bed, giving him the low-down on his
injuries.

“
One bullet barely skimmed
your skull, but it was enough to give you a concussion. The other
one entered through your left side, just passing through the
muscles surrounding your abdomen, and never entered the true
abdominal cavity. A messy-looking wound, but a very lucky
one.”

“
It doesn’t feel lucky,” Red
said, trying to readjust his legs, but finding it too painful to
move.

“
Very, very, lucky,” Dr.
Patel said, patting his hand.

“
Thank you for, you know,
saving my life.”

“
You are very
welcome.”

“
And I’m sorry about tying
you to the chair.” Red said sheepishly. “A man can’t be too careful
these days.”

“
I understand,” the doctor
said. “If my wife and children were still alive, I would have done
the same.”

“
Elizabeth and the boy are
not my real family...”

“
Biologically, that’s true,”
Dr. Patel said. “Elizabeth has told me about your situation. But
they love you like family, and judging by how they speak of you,
you them. In these sorrowful times that makes you a doubly lucky
man.”

“
Are you planning on staying
a while?” Red asked.

“
If I am
welcome.”

“
Of course, you are
welcome.”

“
There’s a suitable home
down the road. I can help you move in, if you would
like.”

“
Not for six to eight
weeks,” Dr. Patel said. “That’s how long it’ll take for you to
recover, at least enough to resume anything more strenuous than
bathing. No moving. No wood-chopping duties. Besides, I already
moved in down the road.”

“
Oh.”

With Elizabeth, Michael and Dr. Patel
on the case, Red was nursed back to health in record time, but he
wasn’t back to chopping firewood for two months. Dr. Patel visited
almost every day, asking if anyone felt sick. When nobody did, he
seemed almost disappointed. The man admitted that he needed the
companionship, but when he learned that a small town was forming a
few miles away, he expanded his new practice, frequently made the
trip to tend to the community, but he always returned to the house
down the lane.

But it wasn’t long before a second
stranger came knocking on Red Wakeland’s door. This time it was a
woman, a very attractive blonde in her late-twenties, named
Veronica Frend. She didn’t appreciate being greeted with a gun to
the face, but at least Red didn’t tie her to the chair. After a
long interrogation, he decided that Veronica and her four chickens
weren’t a threat.

In her old life, she had been the head
IT person for a big insurance company. She said that she didn’t
know a damn thing about raising poultry, but when life gives you
chickens, you learn how to make omelets.

One evening, when Veronica and
Elizabeth were cutting up carrots on the back patio, she made a
confession. Before the plague hit, the company she worked for was
being investigated for investment fraud. When Red asked her if she
had played any part in the company’s underhanded dealings, she
replied, “Of course.” She saw the turn of events as a chance to
come clean, to live an honest life in which she could help people
instead of swindle them. As a former car dealer, Red could
relate.

The next arrivals were a lanky
fourteen-year-old named Nathan Steelsun, and a factory worker, in
his early thirties, named Jerome Firestine. The kid told everybody
to call him Nate. They’d come all the way from New York based on
Jerome’s hunch that they were supposed to go to Ohio. Nate and
Jerome moved into a house down the street, but within a couple of
weeks, the kid set up his own homestead closer to the town square.
Red had reservations about letting someone so young live alone, but
Nate was an independent little cuss and had survive don his own for
months before hooking up with Jerome. More people trickled in every
week, many of them on bicycles, some on foot, a few carpooling. It
was a mystery how they had found the place. The common explanation
was simple:
I felt called.

Red and Elizabeth felt the
responsibility to get all of them through the winter. They had
explored many of the homes in the area already, so they helped the
newcomers find the best homes to support rustic living.

Red shared firewood but he taught the
new arrivals how to cut it for themselves, and was kept busy
maintaining the axes and splitting mauls in sharp condition. Come
spring, Red and Elizabeth were sharing what they had learned about
gardening and divided up the seeds Michael had insisted they
saved—Red was now glad for the boy’s obsession with plants and with
gardening. It never would have occurred to him to save seeds from
the tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables, much less the flowers.
Only a few zucchini seeds this year! Ten plants would provide all
they needed, he knew now.

In late summer, Elizabeth taught them
how to can fruits and vegetables. Soon other cottages along the
road were populated. A village formed. By the end of the year,
seventy-two people, ranging in age from eighteen months to
eighty-one years, had joined the community and more arrived every
week.

Some of the newcomers had useable
skills such as masonry and carpentry, but most professions had
become obsolete with the fall of civilization. Men and women
struggled to find new ways to be useful.

There were whispers about members of
the community possessing unusual abilities. Somehow word had leaked
out about Michael’s gardening ability, so people brought their
seeds to him for a special blessing. When an important tool broke,
it was brought to Red because he had the knack for doing impossible
repairs.

An eight-year-old girl from a
neighboring establishment could predict the weather with one
hundred percent accuracy, which was useful for planning harvests
and parties alike, but mostly the subject of special gifts was
avoided until one late-autumn evening, it came to the
forefront.

Learning to farm on a larger scale than
a few tomato plants in their back yards occupied the time of dozens
of people, as the town’s population grew. Their search for fuel was
spreading out over an ever increasing radius, and what little they
found was used to run heavy farm equipment. Keith Brown, who had
been a highway worker before the plague, had taken to farming
better than many, accustomed as he was to operating the heavy
machinery used in road construction. Keith was hauling one of the
one-ton round hay bales in the scoop of a tractor when it rolled
off, pinning him painfully to the seat. He moaned pitifully as town
folk gathered around, unsure what to do.