Her Name is Beth: Alone: Book 5 Read online




  ALONE

  Book 5:

  Her Name Is Beth

  By Darrell Maloney

  This is a work of fiction. All persons depicted in this book are fictional characters. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Copyright 2016 by Darrell Maloney

  This book is dedicated to:

  Jim Deatsch

  Merrisa Donald

  Robin Carabin

  Cathy Howat

  Julie Strassle-Snyder

  John Lopez

  Les Buzz Crews

  Craig Scott

  Without loyal readers, a writer is merely a man with a head full of words and no place to put them.

  For the latest information about this book and the author’s other works, please visit

  darrellmaloney.com

  The Story Thus Far…

  Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preppers for years. Many of their friends ridiculed them. Sarah’s own mother called them foolish for wasting their resources when they should have been putting money aside for her grandchildren’s college fund.

  Dave and Sarah countered, “A college fund won’t do them much good if they don’t survive to college age.”

  They felt something was coming. They didn’t know what, exactly. And they didn’t know when. But they figured it wouldn’t hurt to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Their kids could always work their way through college as they had.

  Besides, working one’s way through college built character.

  For several years Dave worked a part time job and applied each of his paychecks toward their prepping project. He and Sarah were able to stockpile an impressive amount of dried foods, bottled water, ammunition and fuel to help them survive a catastrophe of any magnitude.

  And they taught themselves and their daughters survival skills as well. Their daughters, Lindsey and Beth, could not only fire a handgun and an AR-15 rifle, they could dismantle and clean them as well. Dave still had to help little Beth get the hand grips on and off, but it wasn’t that she wasn’t willing. Her hands were just too small.

  And Dave didn’t mind. He was proud of them. And of Sarah, who learned skills of her own. How to hunt and trap small game. How to can not only fruits and vegetables from her garden, but excess meats as well.

  As they became more and more proficient at prepping, they became convinced that the most likely threat facing the earth would be massive solar storms which bombarded the planet with electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs. The EMPs would short out virtually anything that ran on electric or battery power. And the earth would essentially be thrown back into the Stone Age.

  But it would seem like the Stone Age for a world whose citizens had forgotten the lost arts of hunting and gathering, and relied solely on supermarkets to supply their food.

  The one thing the Speers had no control over was the timing of the event. If they had known when it was coming, Sarah would never have taken her daughters to a wedding in Kansas City.

  For it was that fateful day, while Sarah and the girls were in a United Airlines 747, that the world went black.

  The power went out at almost the precise minute they were scheduled to land. And Dave, still in San Antonio, was left to wonder whether the big airliner crashed to the ground, or made it to earth and landed safely.

  Dave struggled not only to survive, but also with his emotions. He went through a long bout of depression and considered giving up. Life without Sarah and his daughters wasn’t worth living.

  The only thing that kept him from committing suicide, as many millions of people around the world were doing, was the possibility that they’d made it and his family could be together again someday.

  He somehow carried on from day to day in a newly harsh world, watching the smoke from burning buildings cast a hideous pall over his once proud city. At night he counted the gunshots he heard, not knowing whether they were suicides or marauders sweeping through nearby neighborhoods, plundering and killing as they went.

  By early summer he was convinced he was going insane. The not knowing was making him consider giving up. He kept a journal of his personal thoughts, intending to leave it behind if he didn’t survive and his family somehow made it back to find him gone. It helped him cope, but it wasn’t enough.

  When he finally decided to travel to Kansas City it was mid-summer. Too late. He’d protected enough parts from the EMPs to get his Ford Explorer running again, but not to fix it if it broke down along the way.

  A more realistic scenario was that a band of outlaws would take it away from him. For a running vehicle was worth more than its weight in gold.

  If Dave lost his wheels he’d be afoot on a thousand mile journey. And if he left now he’d still be out there, far from home, in the dead of winter.

  He decided to wait it out and go in the spring. Waiting would be hard, but now he had a mission to prepare for.

  And a reason to survive.

  What followed was the harshest winter on record. Dave survived by isolating himself in a tiny safe room, sleeping by day, and staying up all night. Nighttime was the only time he could safely burn a fire, for he lived in a house that appeared to be vacant.

  And vacant houses don’t have smoke coming from their chimneys.

  Over the brutal winter Dave befriended a Bexar County Sheriff’s deputy and his wife. Frank and Eva had a working ham radio and put him in contact with another operator in the Kansas City area. And Dave received some disheartening news.

  “There was a massive prison break from Leavenworth Penitentiary,” Frank’s friend told Dave. “Hundreds of prisoners got away, and most of the guards were already gone to be with their families. There was no one left to round up the convicts, and most of them are still in the area, raising havoc among the residents.”

  “But Leavenworth is a military prison. Surely most of their inmates were merely deserters and drug users.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Dave. Leavenworth held the same dredges of society, the same violent men that all prisons hold. The military has murderers and rapists just like the rest of society.”

  Sarah’s sister’s farm was just a few miles from Leavenworth prison. Could his family have survived a plane crash, just to be murdered by escaped inmates?

  The thought didn’t do much to ease Dave’s state of mind.

  Finally, the spring thaw came, and Dave set out on his long journey.

  Along the way he made the dreadful mistake of wandering into the wrong town in search of a spare car battery.

  Blanco was a corrupt town ruled by a vicious man. John Savage seemed to take it personally that Dave dared steal a battery from an abandoned chain auto store. And Dave was beaten almost to death by Savage’s henchmen.

  He was saved by a woman. A woman with flowing red hair named, appropriately, “Red.”

  Red was an enigma. She was beautiful but distant. She was the kind of woman all men desired, but who would be had by no one.

  She was as tough as any man. “Texas tough,” her father once called it. And she had no time for romance.

  Red was on her own mission. She wanted to find the man who killed her husband and young son. And then who went a step farther and killed her father.

  She knew who he was. Had a good description of him. She even knew where he went. To a city called Lubbock at the base of the Texas panhandle, some two hundred miles away.

  What Red didn’t have was answers. Not all of them, anyway. She suspected that Jesse Luna was responsible for the killings, but she had no proof. And there seemingly was no motive. Luna, if she could find him, was the only one who could provide her answers.

  Since they were headed in the same direction, Red and Dave te
amed up for a time. Red nursed her new friend back to health and protected him from further harm. As payment, Dave decided to deviate from his quest and to help her find the man she hated enough to kill. “Two guns are better than one,” he pointed out. “And you saved my life. I can’t let you go in there alone.”

  But Red was something else besides beautiful and tough. She was as stubborn as an old mule and independent to a fault. She abandoned Dave and left behind a warning: “Don’t try to follow me. You’ll never find me. Go find your wife and daughters, and perhaps we’ll meet again someday.”

  Dave pressed on to Kansas City and found Sarah being held at gunpoint on her sister’s farm north and west of the city. The farm had been overrun by convicts.

  And now Dave, a former Marine and loving husband and father, was their only hope.

  John Swain was a very brutal man even before the blackout which brought the world to its knees. Amid the chaos, in the newly cold and cruel world, he was even worse.

  Swain led the group of men who’d taken over Karen and Tommy’s farm and ruled with an iron fist. It was Swain who shot Tommy and the other husbands and boyfriends. Dead men caused less trouble, he’d said while laughing over their crumpled bodies.

  Dead men, he pointed out, were easier to guard than live ones.

  It was Swain who devised what he thought was a genius plan to keep the women and children from trying to escape. He had one of them chained and held at gunpoint, twenty four hours a day. Each woman and child took their turn as his “insurance policy.” Each of them were told constantly that in the event one of them tried to escape, the chained hostage would immediately be executed.

  Swain was a meth junkie, frequently out of his mind on dope and prone to hallucinations and paranoia. He made Sarah his one trusted ally. The one he trusted to mix his dope for him. The one he trusted to inject him with it. Always with the admonition that if she tried to give him a hot shot or something else in place of the drug, his henchmen would kill her sister and daughters.

  In Swain’s drug-addled mind Sarah fancied him. Loved him the same way he loved her.

  But he couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sarah hated Swain with every fiber of her being. And when Dave managed to liberate the ranch, and Swain was the last man standing, she forbid her husband from seeking revenge.

  “I’m the one he’s been tormenting,” she told Dave. “He needs to be punished. He deserves to die. But I’m the one who’s going to make it happen. I’ve earned that right.”

  Dave would never ask what Swain had done to Sarah to turn her heart so cold. What happened between Sarah and her captor would go with her to her grave. When Dave looked into her eyes he could see the hatred that now resided there. And he knew his wife well enough not to question her.

  Or to deny her.

  Swain scoffed at her when she brandished her gun. He said she wouldn’t pull the trigger. That she loved him too much.

  He was wrong, and she proved him so.

  He was dead with the second shot. But she pumped five more rounds into his lifeless body.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  For something so wrong, it felt so right.

  And now, the adventure continues…

  Chapter 1

  Sarah was beside herself.

  For the very first time, she’d taken the life of another human being. And while she should have been overjoyed that her nightmare was over, that she and her daughter were finally free once more, her head was swimming.

  Swimming in a sea of emotions she could only begin to grasp.

  Forty minutes earlier she’d been in the kitchen doing dishes. Dragging her feet, trying to hold off the inevitable for just a little bit longer. And at the same time worried about delaying too long and running the risk of upsetting her brutal captor.

  Swain was not a man who could be put off for long. His patience was short, his temper quick. His brutality not something to be messed with.

  She’d had strict orders to report to him as soon as she was finished in the kitchen.

  He never said what for. But she knew. She knew she’d find him, there on the bed, naked as a jaybird and fondling himself. She knew he’d demand she shed her own clothing and prepare his needle while he watched.

  And she’d wonder if this would be the night when he’d finally rape her.

  They’d gone through the drill a hundred times before. He’d told her on many occasions it was a hard choice for him to make. That before him were two things he craved more than anything else in the world.

  His taste for the ice had always won out in the past. He’d watch her crush the crystal meth into a fine powder and dissolve it into water. Then draw it into the hypodermic needle through a piece of cotton.

  Meth junkies are constantly dehydrated and malnourished. They simply lose their desire for food or drink. They go for days at a time without eating anything at all. And only occasionally sipping water. It just never occurs to them that they are hungry or thirsty. That’s why their gums dry out and their teeth fall free.

  Yet as dry as his mouth was, Swain always managed to salivate while he watched Sarah go through the process of fixing his latest bump. He admired the soft contours of her naked body as she prepared the dope that would soon course through his veins, giving his brain a warm rush and easing his early pangs of withdrawal.

  He always claimed to be torn between which sweet indulgence he’d rather have. Her or the bump. But in the end, to Sarah’s relief, he always chose the dope.

  Always, without exception.

  Still, she’d long suspected that someday, perhaps in a flight of fancy, he’d summon the strength to forego the injection for a few minutes and force himself on her instead.

  It was a dread that always resided in the back of her mind when she was summoned to his room. And this day had been no different.

  Just minutes before she’d been doing the dishes and feeling that familiar dread. Wondering if today was the day.

  Then Jessika, her sister’s neighbor and another hostage, came into the kitchen.

  “Dave’s in the basement,” Sarah was told in a whisper. “He said to drag your feet. He’s here to end it all.”

  Sarah had almost passed out at that moment.

  But she held herself together.

  She hung in there long enough to watch while Dave shot Joe Davis through the head with a crossbow. She watched as he freed her sister Karen from her handcuffs, hoping it wasn’t just a dream.

  She regained enough composure to steal upstairs with her husband, and to draw Tony Garcia into the hallway.

  Then to watch from a darkened bedroom as Dave lifted his crossbow once again and sent another bolt flying through Garcia’s heart.

  Sarah herself sent Swain to hell. And she did so without a bit of remorse or guilt.

  It had all happened so quickly. In the span of mere minutes.

  It was surreal.

  And it made her doubt her own sanity. Wonder if she was hallucinating. Whether any of it was really real.

  As she walked down the stairs with Dave and into her daughter Lindsey’s waiting arms, her mind was a fog. She didn’t know if any of this really happened.

  Or whether it was a cruel hoax. Nothing but a dream. A dream meant to make her heart soar. Then to crush her again when she awakened to find that nothing had changed.

  Sarah felt weak. Felt faint. Had to sit down.

  Dave helped her to the couch, then dispatched his daughter.

  “Lind, please. Get her some water.”

  Dave laid her down and sat on the edge of the couch beside her.

  He had her turn her head and gave her sips of water.

  “Not too much,” he said. “Don’t overdo it.”

  She wept, openly and unashamedly.

  He dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from a nearby box of Puffs, until one was soaked through. Then he pulled at another.

  He ran his fingers through her hair, as though trying to convince himself she was really the
re. He too wondered whether this was all a dream.

  He had a question for her that he just had to ask. As much as he knew the answer would break his heart, he had to hear it.

  But he’d wait. He’d wait until the tears stopped flowing.

  Lindsey sat behind him, her hand on his shoulder. She didn’t want to draw it away, for fear her father would disappear into nothingness; would simply vanish. She couldn’t risk it. It was as though as long as she touched him he wouldn’t disappear. He wouldn’t be a mirage. He wouldn’t go away and break her heart.

  Sarah’s tears finally subsided, and he could hold off no longer.

  “Honey,” he said. “I haven’t seen Beth. Where is she?”

  Sarah was stunned. She looked at him and stared in a painful silence

  She couldn’t… she just couldn’t find the words.

  Chapter 2

  Dave stormed out of the room, inconsolable.

  Beth had always been his baby. He’d spoiled her rotten from day one. Sarah and Lindsey sometimes got jealous over the attention he gave her. He knew he doted on her, but he couldn’t help himself. She was just so tiny, so dainty, so… precious.

  And now, when he asked for her, he realized she was gone. He knew because of the pain his question brought to Sarah’s face. And when his jaw dropped and he looked to Lindsey, she turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  Lindsey started to chase after him, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “This is my job.”

  Sarah was only a few seconds behind him. But those few seconds were all Dave needed to rip the boards away from the front door and walk onto the front porch and into the yard.

  By the time she got to him he had collapsed on the ground beneath a huge oak tree.

  It was the same oak tree where he’d pushed little Beth on an old tire swing when they’d come to the farm to visit three years before.