Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Read online

  ALONE

  Book 11:

  Texas Bound

  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 2018 by Darrell Maloney

  This book is dedicated to:

  Dave Collins

  Sharon Roop

  Brynda Willis Porter

  Mary Hornsby

  Cathy Missinne

  Janet Gateley

  Donna McDonald Finley-Friedrich

  Robert Pace

  Lynn Goodrich

  Karina Halt

  Rebecca Vance

  Without faithful readers an author is just a guy with a bunch of words swimming around in his head, and no one to hear them. Thank you all.

  The Story Thus Far…

  When we last left the Speer family Dave had finally finished his trek to find and bring back little Beth.

  The three of them: Dave, Beth and “Grandpa Sal,” arrived from their harrowing journey across the country to find their homecoming wouldn’t be as joyous or as easy as they’d hoped.

  The Dykes brothers’ bunker had been overrun and was heavily damaged. And while there were almost certainly people still inside, they weren’t showing themselves.

  Dave had no way of telling whether they were friend or foe.

  He was faced with the daunting task of flushing them out into the open so he could kill the aggressors who remained, but spare those he loved who might be captives.

  He was able to accomplish just that, with a combination of tear gas, smoke grenades and poison.

  Oh, and three sticks of dynamite.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the only one he had.

  John Parker and gang drew their last breaths in a smoky and toxic environment unable to see, hear, or do anything besides die.

  Fifty yards away from them and ten feet above ground Sarah and Karen embraced Dave.

  The tears in his eyes were borne from happiness. Theirs were from the tear gas he’d dropped into the bunker, but they were none the worse for wear and the effects would quickly pass.

  They were overjoyed, the three of them.

  But Dave still had a major concern.

  “Where’s Lindsey?”

  “Don’t worry, Dave, she’s safe.”

  That was the good news.

  But it wasn’t to be the only news Dave was greeted with.

  Sarah, against her sister’s wishes, wanted to come clean with her betrayal to Dave.

  It was possibly the worst possible time to share such a thing and would certainly ruin his homecoming for all concerned.

  But in Sarah’s mind it had to be done.

  At Karen’s farm nearby Lindsey was worried.

  They’d heard the explosion and knew it came from the bunker.

  After all, in a part of the state covered by farm land and heavy woods, where else could it have come from?

  She’d had a strained relationship with her mother for weeks. Had lost a lot of respect for her. At times she couldn’t even bring herself to look at her.

  But Sarah was still her mother – the only one she’d ever have.

  And she still loved her.

  She was worried not only for Sarah, but for her Aunt Karen as well.

  And she didn’t want to see either of them die.

  Beth and Sal also heard the explosion from a boarding house on the outskirts of Ely.

  They were playing together in the yard, Sal pushing her on a tire swing hanging from a branch on a hundred year old red oak tree.

  It sounded almost like a clap of thunder in the distance.

  Beth asked, “What was that?”

  She looked around to see if anyone else had heard it.

  The heads of other children and some adults turned as well. They’d heard it too.

  Sal couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen.

  “I don’t know, child. Perhaps it’s a storm headed this way.”

  He knew better. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  But he more than she understood the implications of the explosion.

  And that it was almost certainly tied to Dave in some manner.

  Had he not been surprised by the sound; had he not been caught short, he might have been able to come up with a better response to her question.

  But there was no good way to tell an eight-year-old her father or mother might have just died.

  Instead, he tried to deflect; to turn the conversation into something else.

  Something more suitable.

  “Whatever it is, it’s over now. Let’s go inside to see if Mrs. Taylor’s apple pie has cooled enough to eat.”

  And now… the 11th installment of Alone:

  Texas Bound

  Chapter 1

  Smoke still streamed from the pile of rubble which was once the bunker’s pillbox.

  A passing breeze carried it away, but it couldn’t take away the stench emanating from the pile as well.

  It was an odd mixture of burned powder, insecticide and tear gas.

  And death.

  The stench itself told a story of the battle which had just taken place.

  And which Dave was trying to make sure was really finished.

  Sarah was trying to tell him something. Something about a confession or something.

  But Dave’s mind was on other things. Like making sure someone didn’t extricate himself from the wreckage and open fire on them.

  “Sarah… honey… whatever you have to say can wait. You shouldn’t be here. This might not be over yet.”

  She started to object but he’d have none of it.

  “Get back over there with Karen until I clear the place. I need to make sure they’re all dead. We can’t go on with our lives until we know for sure they’re no longer a threat.”

  He didn’t wait for her to argue. Instead he grabbed both her shoulders and turned her around, then guided her partway down the path to safety the big Caterpillar’s tracks had left behind.

  “Go hang out with Karen while I clear the bunker.”

  The bunker, of course, didn’t require much clearing.

  There wasn’t much left of it.

  But Dave was a former United States Marine who’d done two tours of duty in Iraq.

  He’d learned a few things.

  First of all, human beings have a tremendous desire to survive even the most dire of situations.

  He’d seen Iraqi insurgents dig themselves out of the rubble of flattened houses to continue a battle the good guys thought was done.

  He’d lost a good friend that way… because his fellow Marine had gotten complacent and turned his back on a smoking pile of rubble. And was shot through the neck by a dying insurgent bent on taking one last American with him.

  Another thing he’d learned was that anger and hatred give some men super strength.

  Enough so to pull aside large pieces of broken concrete and twisted rubble in a desperate attempt to escape certain death.

  Lastly, he learned in combat that a Marine shouldn’t take anything for granted.

  Taking things for granted got good men killed.

  Dave knew the Dykes brothers’ bunker contained no gas masks, because he asked when he was given a tour.

  But that didn’t mean the animals who took over the bunker and claimed it as their own didn’t bring some in with them.

  If they were so equipped it was a whole new ball game. For the bunker itself wasn’t collapsed. There was still plenty of room for survivors to move about. Plenty of oxygen to sustain them through gas masks until the air slowly cleared.

  And it would clear.

 
The smoke rolling from the interior of the bunker was an indication the collapse of the pillbox didn’t make the bunker airtight.

  And if smoke could get out, fresh air could and would get in.

  And if fresh air could get in, then any survivors would eventually be able to take off their masks.

  They could dig themselves out at their leisure.

  And they could come searching for whoever it was who had the audacity to tear up their home.

  Now, Dave was afraid of no one and welcomed a good fight.

  If he had only himself to worry about he would have gone on his way; if the bad guys survived and came after him he’d just deal with them again then.

  But Dave was on the verge of reuniting his entire family after a very long year and a half.

  It wouldn’t do to put them at any risk.

  From each side of the pillbox he swept his weapon across the wreckage looking for signs of movement.

  He used the same techniques he’d been taught in the Corps; the same ones he used in Fallujah.

  The pile of crumbled concrete was massive.

  If there were survivors with gas masks it would be a formidable opponent.

  But not invincible.

  Once he was sure no one was coming out of the pillbox anytime soon he returned to Sarah and Karen.

  He uttered no sentiments.

  He wasn’t lovey-dovey, as most husbands would be after finally seeing their wives after nineteen months.

  No, he was all business.

  He spoke to the women not as a husband and brother-in-law.

  He spoke to them as he would his Marines, for he was still in combat mode.

  Lovey-dovey would have to wait for later.

  “You two go back to the farm. I’ll get there when I can. I need to collapse the whole bunker first.”

  Sure, he could have asked if the bad guys brought gas masks in with them.

  But Dave was a big believer in intel. He knew that intel made or broke any operation.

  He also knew that flawed intel cost lives.

  Whether Sarah and Karen saw the infiltrators with gas masks or not didn’t mean they didn’t exist. For there would be no reason for them to actually pull them out to show their captives. They likely wouldn’t pull them out until they were needed.

  Dave’s heart was telling him to stand down. To greet his wife the way he’d dreamed of greeting her for months. To sweep her off her feet and swing her around and kiss her like there was no tomorrow.

  But no.

  First things first.

  “Go,” he said to a hesitating Karen and Sarah. “Go now.”

  Chapter 2

  While Karen and Sarah made their way to Karen’s old farm Dave made his way to his stash of ordnance.

  He pulled out several grenades and several sticks of dynamite.

  He wasn’t sure which one would work the best in this particular situation. But since both were available he’d use them both.

  After all, Marines were just men, and men were just big boys at heart.

  And no boy, no man, no Marine will ever pass up an opportunity to blow something up.

  He made his way to the first ventilation pipe, careful to stay on the path through the mine field he’d cleared the day before.

  His first choice was a hand grenade, which he expected would blow off the mesh covering welded to the bottom of the pipe without blowing him into the next county.

  He pulled the pin, dropped it in the pipe, turned his head and covered his ears.

  The pipe shuttered and shrapnel shot straight out of the pipe and skyward.

  He covered his head as some of it rained down on him, but it did no damage.

  He dropped a second grenade in the same manner.

  This time the pipe didn’t shudder. The first explosion knocked the mesh free and the second grenade dropped all the way to the bunker’s floor.

  He heard the explosion, but this time it was muted and nothing came out the pipe.

  He was clear to proceed to the next step in his plan.

  Three sticks of dynamite wouldn’t fit in the four-inch pipe; he had to settle for two.

  This was old school dynamite, with burnable fuse.

  He didn’t even know they made it this way anymore, but was glad they did. For it fit his needs perfectly.

  He twisted the two fuses together, lit them and dropped them in the pipe.

  Then he heel-toed it down his narrow “safe” path until he was about twenty yards away and hit the dirt.

  The earth rumbled and the ground over the bunker collapsed.

  Dave knew instinctively that any bad guys in that half of the bunker were blown to bits or crushed.

  Preferably both.

  He looked toward the pillbox and saw a huge cloud of dust coming from the wreckage. The blast forced it through whatever cracks and crevices it could find.

  There was a second cloud about fifty feet to his left, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

  That puzzled him for a moment until he realized the concussion from the blast blew away the plastic he used to cover the second vent.

  And the smoke served as a reminder where the second vent was; he found it easily.

  He followed the same procedure, with one exception.

  The first grenade didn’t dislodge the wire mesh at the bottom of the second pipe. It took two grenades to do that.

  After two additional sticks of dynamite collapsed the second half of the bunker Dave was finally satisfied.

  He stood up, dusted himself off, and called the job done.

  He’d never met John Parker or any of his men.

  Didn’t know anything about them at all.

  Other than the fact they’d killed the rightful owners of the bunker and stolen it from them, then kept his wife and daughter hostage.

  And really, what more did he need to know about them?

  He threw his backpack over one shoulder and began his walk through the forest toward Karen’s farm.

  His war was over.

  It was time for his homecoming.

  As he made his way through the woods, Karen and Sarah several hundred yards ahead of him, his daughter Lindsey was in a near panic.

  The first explosion struck fear in her heart. She’d wanted to go running back to the bunker to see what happened.

  To see if her mom was still alive.

  Kara had to restrain her.

  “No,” she said. “If you go back Parker’s men will probably shoot you. If they don’t they’ll put you in shackles to prevent you from escaping. And that won’t do any of us any good. You, me, your mom… nobody.”

  “But Kara, I need to know. What if my mom is injured and needs my help?”

  That was when the second explosion went off.

  Now she was in a near panic.

  On Karen’s instructions, they’d prepared the farm house to make it appear to be a tomb. They’d taken black spray paint and painted all the windows from the inside.

  They’d hammered plywood over the front and back doors, and used the last of the paint to put a message on each piece.

  DEATH HOUSE: Family of four murder/suicide victims inside. Please let them rest in peace.

  It was a plan they hoped would keep transients and evil-doers away from the house, for no one wants to share a place with four rotting corpses.

  But it had a down side too. It was very dark in the house, for one thing. Even in the daytime the women needed to burn two electric lamps on each floor, powered by a battery bank in the basement.

  It was also impossible to see through the painted windows, so the day before Kara created a “peep hole” for each of them.

  It wasn’t anything elaborate.

  She merely used her thumbnail to scratch two dime-sized holes in the dried paint. Then she took two strips of black electrical tape and taped them over each hole.

  “To look out,” she’d explained to Lindsey, “Just pull the tape away from the hole. When you’re done put the tape bac
k so someone can’t peek in from the other side.”

  They’d only used the peep holes a couple of times, when they wanted to make sure the coast was clear so they could get fuel for the generator.

  Now, as Lindsey sat on the couch bawling her eyes out in worry, Kara went to one of the peep holes and peered out.

  She was just in time to see Karen and Sarah break out of the woods and into the farm’s east pasture.

  Chapter 3

  “Lindsey,” Kara called. “Come quick.”

  Lindsey knew it was good news. She could tell by Kara’s voice.

  Or rather, she knew it wasn’t bad news. For Kara sounded overjoyed.

  Lindsey was overjoyed too when she looked out the second peep hole and saw her mother and aunt crossing the cow pasture and headed their way.

  She wasted no time raising the window and crawling through it and onto the front porch.

  It was their only point of entry and egress now, since the doors were permanently sealed with plywood.

  Lindsey giggled like a school girl when she ran across the yard, then crawled between two strands of barbed wire to gain entry into the pasture.

  She ran headlong into her mother’s arms, yelling, “You’ve escaped! By God, you’ve escaped.”

  Although she’d been livid with anger at her mother in recent days, all seemed forgiven. She was so worried Sarah was injured or killed in the blasts she’d heard that nothing else mattered.

  Her mom and her Aunt Karen were safe. And they weren’t running. That meant that Parker and his men weren’t pursuing them.

  Life was good.

  But she had so many questions.

  But… how? How did you escape? And what were those explosions all about? Did you come under attack again? Did you find some bombs and blow up Parker and his men? How did you…”

  Her questions were coming faster than Sarah could answer them.

  Then they came to an abrupt halt.

  Lindsey’s questions, that is.

  They stopped the instant she saw her father emerge from the forest, at almost the exact spot Sarah and Karen had walked out a few minutes before.