Defending Home Read online

  “You can do a lot of damage with just your hands. I know.”

  Stark’s face grew more annoyed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your buds kidnapped and raped one of the Eagleton women, or did you forget?”

  Stark frowned as if he didn’t know. “Durand, he told me about that,” he said.

  “That was me,” Karen said.

  For a moment, Stark’s eyes widened, as if he realized he was in greater danger than he realized. But then, he straightened up.

  “Let’s get this straight between us. I didn’t have anything to do with raping you. I wasn’t even in the camp when it happened. I was on patrol. They doubled our shifts when our men started getting sick.”

  “Oh please, like I care that you didn’t rape me. You weren’t supposed to be in our town at all, not one of you!”

  “You accepted our help.”

  “You lied to us! You tried to take us over! You turned us into slaves!”

  “We protected you in exchange for a little help and courtesy. We can’t worry about feeding ourselves and patrolling for invaders at the same time.”

  “Are you kidding me? You weren’t trying to protect us. You murdered Eric Shelton! You killed Rick and Hernando and so many others, and then you locked up our men like animals!”

  Stark’s skin turned beet red. “We put down a rebellion and quite mercifully, I’d say. If I had had it my way, I’d have strung up a few of your men on poles to show you ungrateful bastards and bitches what –”

  “Stop it!” Kovacs roared.

  Stark and Karen turned to Lauren and Kovacs a few steps ahead of them. Stark’s comrade approached him and spoke more calmly. “There’s no point in defending the past. Let’s just do what we must so we can live another day.”

  Stark kept glowering at Karen. “They killed many of our friends. I have not forgotten what her town did to us.”

  “And they have not forgotten what we did to them. Right now they have the guns. If you’re itching for a rematch, we will be heavily outclassed.”

  Stark’s further protests died in his throat. Instead, he turned and walked forward, past Karen and then past Lauren.

  Kovacs glanced at Karen. “It is not you he truly blames. He’s angry at Volhein. He would piss on Volhein’s grave many times over.”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “I really don’t give a damn who he blames.”

  Lauren stepped past Karen. “Kovacs, maybe you should join Stark and wait up until we catch up.”

  The soldier nodded, then left. Lauren turned her attention to the fuming Karen. “Hey.” Lauren’s hand rubbed Karen’s shoulder. “Maybe you should keep your distance from these guys. Let me handle them.”

  Chapter Five

  Nothing. Thomas Criver could do nothing. His wife lay in bed, never having moved or rolled to one side in the past several hours. Tom knew. He was right here the whole time. She was asleep in such a deep and eerie way that it scared him. This wasn’t normal sleep. This looked more like a coma. Whatever it was, Cheryl had fallen into it.

  Now, it wasn’t true that Tom didn’t do anything. He wiped sweat off Cheryl’s skin. He made sure she was as cool as possible. But he couldn’t feed her or give her anything to drink. He couldn’t interact with her. He wasn’t sure he was doing anything to help her fight this damned disease. That was the nothing that Tom feared.

  He looked out the window to track the time of the day. Noon came. Midafternoon arrived. Then the onset of dusk approached. In all that time, Tom had not done more than sip water or munch on crackers. He couldn’t eat. As evening approached, he realized what his body was reacting to. He was on a deathwatch.

  Part of his gut feared that Cheryl had reached the point of no return. This virus had won the day. Now it was just a matter of time before Cheryl departed her body, bound for her eternal fate. All Tom was doing was waiting for the final moment.

  He had been here before, with his own mother. His father had married a woman, but two years into their marriage she was killed in a car accident. The senior Criver, heartbroken, took three more years to marry again, when he found love with a woman four years older than he. Not long after, Tom was born.

  His mother, Sasha Jennifer Criver, was older than most mothers of kids Tom had known. He had grown up with a woman in her forties, by high school, Sasha was in her fifties. By the time Tom had completed college, his mother was in her early sixties. Then, the cancer came.

  Sasha Criver was a vivacious woman who looked ten years younger than people would have thought by looking at her. By the end of the two-year period of her cancer, she looked slightly older than her actual age. Shortly before Tom met his first wife Jessica, Sasha passed away. The sight of her haunted his memories for a good while. They never had been more present than they were right now.

  Tom gasped. Had he been asleep? He panted. It was dark outside. He jumped to his feet. He must have sat down and dozed off. He looked at Cheryl. She lay so still. His heart raced. No, she couldn’t have! He leaned down by her face. He felt it. There was breath passing in and out of her nostrils. No, his Cheryl still was here.

  He sighed. Damn, would he be like this until the end? What would happen if she finally did pass? He never could leave her body here. He’d have to take it with him. But the kids! How in God’s name could he tell them they no longer had a mother? How could he even think of digging the grave to put his beloved into?

  “Dammit,” he whispered, “Why don’t you take me instead of her?”

  Perhaps he was about to have another reckoning with God.

  Tom Criver was many things, but devoutly religious wasn’t one of them. He often claimed to be a good neighbor of God, but not exactly part of the family. Why, he couldn’t say. Perhaps he just enjoyed charting his own course in life, and the idea of God pretty much foreclosed the notion that he could be the master of his own destiny. His father was more devout, though he had no problems dipping into the pool of verbal profanity—Tom learned a few good ones from his dad. His mother was less so until the end of her life.

  A few years ago, Tom had met and married the lovely Jessica Noel, and together they had had a child, Michael Christian Criver. But one evening, Michael suddenly passed away in his crib from an undetected case of SIDS, a tragic moment that sent Tom’s world spiraling downward. The senseless death of his own son drove Tom into a prolonged rage against the creator of the universe. Why young Michael, who had his whole life ahead of him? The tragedy destroyed Jessica, driving her into a deep depression and eventually out the front door of the Criver home and off into the world to an uncertain fate.

  A short time later, the nuclear powers of the world fired off nuclear weapons that lashed the Earth with EMP pulses. The event hammered home that Tom Criver never could be the master of his own destiny, because he realized that no one was. All the conveniences of modern life, all the advanced technology that let people master the world around them, were wiped out. It also taught Tom that in truth, nobody really was guaranteed another day on this planet. That was the first real peace he had made with God.

  After that, he could recall those times when he was taught about the Bible more clearly. The stories about the Hebrews suffering under the yoke of Egypt in the story of Moses, the Babylonian invasion of Israel, and the personal flights of devout prophets from the reach of evil kings reminded Tom that the world, frankly, was always a challenging and harsh place. Freedom and security were never givens, and many human beings died horrible deaths at the hands of evil men.

  Tom could accept the world as it was. But could he still accept it if someone he loved was cut down in her prime, when there were thirteen kids who needed her?

  And one husband, Tom added to himself.

  He wasn’t selfish in asking Cheryl to be spared. People prayed for the sick all the time. True, his own mother wasn’t spared, but perhaps her own time on this planet was done. Had she lived, she would have experienced the horrors of the post-EMP world. Or perhaps it was simply
fruitless to find any rationalization for why some people recover from sickness while others don’t.

  As the hours passed into midnight, Tom thumbed through the small Bible he had brought with him. He wondered if he had to pray a certain way. He knew the Lord’s Prayer, but it seemed too impersonal, plus wouldn’t God want him to speak personally and not by rote?

  He came across the passage that the prayers of a righteous man avail much. If so, Tom might have some issues there. He almost laughed, but he admitted he wasn’t perfect. He had a friend who went to a church who wore a promise ring to wait until marriage to have sex. Tom, meanwhile, had lost his virginity at eighteen to a leggy blonde during his college freshman year, then made love to Jessica in an elevator before their marriage, and then had a few intimate encounters with Cheryl before they finally exchanged marriage vows out in a pool of water in the woods. Admittedly, there were a few commandments in the Bible Tom hadn’t kept very well.

  Over the next few hours, Tom read more from his Bible. Occasionally, he tried talking to God. At first he spent time pleading, then bargaining, but then he abandoned it, as he felt the creator of the universe wasn’t going to be impressed with just the life of Thomas Criver. When you can speak a whole cosmos into existence, it’s not like anybody on this small speck of galactic dirt can offer up something comparable.

  He stopped at one passage in the book of Isiah. Rendered in classic King James English, God was proclaiming to the people of Israel that “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

  Talk about a pep talk, Tom thought.

  His eyes grew heavy. His watch over Cheryl had exhausted him. How long has it been? He brought the Bible up to his face. This time, he read the words out loud, from the book of Psalms.

  “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me,” he said, before slumping over, asleep.

  Lauren wiped the latest round of sweat from Nadia’s face. Then she dipped a second cloth in water, folded it, and placed it on her forehead. Kovacs approached her. Nadia lay flat in the wagon, her head near the rear edge. Lauren was tending to her standing up.

  “How is she doing?” he asked.

  Lauren cringed. “It’s pretty bad. She’s alive. That’s the only good news. I can’t even rouse her to give her electrolytes or water. She’s probably been asleep the whole day.”

  “You said her name was Nadia, right?” Kovacs asked.

  “Yeah. She’s a friend. She was a survivor from someplace up north, but I forgot where it was. She came to Eagleton, well, not long before you all arrived.”

  “She was part of your resistance?”

  “Yeah,” Lauren replied, “She was part of her city’s police force.”

  Kovacs glanced in the wagon. “She appears to be a strong woman.”

  “Why are you interested in her?” asked Cooper.

  The man was seated on the ground not far from a burning campfire. He had been eating from a can for the past few minutes, keeping a firm grip on his fork. “I hope you’re not holding a grudge against those who defeated your army.”

  Lauren’s muscles tensed. Cooper had a point. She didn’t really know that Kovacs or Stark weren’t thinking of revenge.

  “You hold our lives in your hands,” Kovacs replied, “It would be stupid to try anything now.”

  “It was stupid to invade a peaceful town that did nothing to you and hurt and kill its people,” Cooper replied, “Yet you did it anyway.”

  Kovacs exhaled loudly. “If I killed all of you, I would have to go back to finding out where to get my next meal.” Then he faced Lauren directly. “Things change. Besides, if Volhein had not been so foolish, things may have turned out differently.”

  “Meaning we’d all still be your slaves,” Karen said bitterly from the other side of the camp.

  “I don’t see any point in arguing over the past,” Kovacs said, before turning once again to Lauren.

  “I don’t expect you to trust us, but you do need us.” He lowered his voice. “I can tell you’re not a soldier. This must be very new to you, going into the woods, leading others.”

  “I think I’m doing okay,” Lauren said.

  “I think you are, so far. But are you prepared to kill?”

  Lauren frowned. “We all did back when you were occupying our town.”

  “You mean your little poisoning act?” Kovacs chuckled, a little too deviously for Lauren’s taste.

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about shooting somebody, putting the bullet in their body, watching them die in front of you. You’ve never done that, have you?”

  Lauren didn’t want to answer that question, not in front of somebody she wanted to feel wasn’t safe around her if he acted out of line. “I’ll do what I have to do,” she finally said.

  “You are a brave woman. But bravery without skill won’t win a war.” Then Kovacs rose and strolled back to Stark.

  As Karen approached Cooper, she kept an eye on Kovacs and Lauren as they talked. Scowling, she sat down next to her lover.

  “You are still in a foul mood,” Cooper said, “I can tell by how hard your bottom has hit the ground. Are you still angry about having them come along, or is there something else?”

  “Stark said Durand told them about my rape.” Karen grabbed her legs and pulled them closer to her chest.

  “Durand also is supposed to be at the camp where we’re going.” She swallowed. “I don’t remember all their faces. I know there were a few, maybe three or four. They all were shouting to each other. I heard names. One of them was Dur-, dur-, but I can’t remember the rest of it.”

  “Perhaps it is not something that you should try to remember,” Cooper said.

  “No.” Karen shook her head.

  “No, I can’t ever escape this. I have to face this.” She closed her eyes. “There was one guy with a round face, a little beard maybe. He dragged me into the tent. He tore open my shirt, exposed me.”

  “Karen, perhaps you should stop now,” Cooper said.

  Karen acted as if she hadn’t heard him. The memories were coming in a little more vividly, her sickening pleas for mercy, the sound of her buttoned shirt ripped open, her bra following after, all the actions of that one man. Two other men around her started disrobing. Karen knew the horror of what was to come, and shouted ever loudly for it to stop. But then they started slapping her to quiet her down.

  That man…

  Durand…

  Karen lifted her head, then raised her gun. “I want us to keep going. If we find him there, I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes.”

  “Hey…hey…”

  Tom blinked his eyes. Someone was speaking, but he was in such a delirium that he couldn’t tell who it was.

  “Tom…”

  Tom was flat on his back. The bed lay next to him. He grabbed onto the draping bed covers and used it to pull himself up. He was groggy, as if he had been sleeping for a long time.

  He successfully raised himself to eye level with the top of the bed. A redheaded woman was sitting up, the sheets and covers off her, staring at him with narrow eyes.

  “I have to pee real bad,” she said in a soft, tired voice.

  Chapter Six

  Tom finished wiping Cheryl’s mouth. “If I eat any more applesauce, I’m going to turn red,” she said.

  “It’s the only thing you can keep down so far.” Tom dumped the cloth in a small trash can by the bed. “How’s your appetite?”

  “Coming back a little. The itching isn’t as bad anymore. It doesn’t hurt if I sit up.”

  Tom smiled. “Great. Maybe we’re finally making it out of this.”

  Cheryl then started laughing.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  The redhead lifted her finger toward the credenza by the wall. A television set sat on the other side. “I was about to ask you to
turn on the TV.” Then she laughed, longer and louder. “I keep forgetting….that nothing works anymore.”

  Even Tom couldn’t stop laughing. “I have those moments. Not all the time, but they keep coming up.”

  The two laughed for a while. Finally, Tom asked his wife, “So what do we do now?”

  “I guess we can talk,” she replied.

  “I know you’ve been overseas for a long time. Do you ever think about what’s going on where you served? Or just anywhere? England, anywhere in Europe, China, Japan…” Tom yawned.

  Cheryl exhaled softly. “It’s strange, but I’ve never even thought about it for a long time. I guess for most of the world it’s not any better than here, and in some places it really wouldn’t change much.” She paused to think. “Damn, it could be even worse. No more mass media to show atrocities or human rights being violated. Warlords or dictators could do whatever they want now.”

  “Do you ever think about some tin-pot dictator deciding the U.S. of A. should be mounted on his wall and come over here with an army?”

  “I think we had that already.”

  “I’m not talking about Volhein. I mean some general somewhere in Asia or South America.”

  “If he’s from Asia his army would have to row a long way across the Pacific to get here.” Cheryl laughed a little. “I don’t know. We could get hit today, or tomorrow or maybe never.”

  “I just hate thinking about what could happen to our kids. What if they have to fight? They have a normal life, as normal as things can get nowadays. Are they going to lose that all over again?”

  “Tom, we’re holed up in an abandoned house and I’m sick as a dog. Things probably never are going to be normal for years, maybe not until we’re old and senile.”

  “You really think we’re going to live to be old?”

  Cheryl wiped her nose. “I will. Statistically, women live longer than men. So, I’ve got a fighting chance.” Then she rolled her head in her husband’s direction. “You’re probably screwed, baby.”