A Stunning Betrayal: Alone: Book 9 Read online

  “And to come back alive again?

  “Seriously?

  “Karen, I’m tired of living a pipe dream. I’m tired of getting my hopes up and having them dashed. I thought we’d be safe at your place until Swain and his animals swept in and caused so much misery.

  “Then Dave came, and I got my hopes up he’d somehow fix everything and make it right again.

  “Then he left. He left us here all alone to go get Beth. Even though she’s almost certainly dead now. He left us here and I got my hopes up again that we’d be safe here in the bunker with Mason and Jacob and Jason.

  “Then Manson and his men came. And my hopes were dashed again.

  “You can’t blame me, Karen. You can’t blame me that I’ve decided to stop believing in dreams. I’ve decided to be like the others. I’ve decided to just start taking what I want.

  “I miss having someone, Karen. I miss feeling a man’s touch upon my skin. I miss being able to hold someone, to feel his body against mine. To feel his warmth and to know he enjoys it just as much as I do.”

  “Sarah, you have no right to do this. You gave up that right when you said your vows to your husband.”

  “Damn you, Karen! Don’t you dare judge me. Dave chose to leave on his own accord. Even though any fool would see that there was no hope of finding Beth. And that she’s almost certainly dead, even if he did find her.

  “I didn’t leave him, Karen. He left me. If he’d stayed things would be different. But he didn’t. He left me. Don’t you dare judge me or my feelings. Or my decisions.”

  “What about your other daughter, Sarah?

  “What about Lindsey?”

  Chapter 16

  “What do you mean? What about her?”

  “She knows.”

  “What? What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her, Sarah. She told me. She’s not a kid anymore. And she’s a lot smarter than you give her credit for.”

  “But… but how could she possibly…”

  “She could tell by the way you looked at Parker and the way he looked at you. And the way the two of you seem to disappear at the same time, then show up again at the same time.

  “I don’t know how in the world you thought you could fool Lind, of all people.

  “Have you given any thought as to how this is affecting her?”

  “I’ll talk to her… when the times is right, I mean…”

  At that moment Robert Santos came walking down the corridor which connected the buried shipping containers.

  “I have to go,” Sarah said as she peeled away from her sister and headed to the back of the bunker.

  “If I were you I’d talk to her sooner rather than later. This is tearing her up, Sarah.”

  Santos squeezed past Karen in the narrow corridor and asked, “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Ooh, touchy… take it easy. I didn’t cause this. None of it.”

  “Sorry.”

  He followed Sarah down the corridor and Karen went to her bunk to sulk.

  She wasn’t there long.

  A drunken Manson came stumbling down the same corridor a few minutes later and yelled at Karen, “Get up, you shtoopid bish. Ah’m hung…hung… hungry. Go makes me shumthing to eat. And pronto, damn it!”

  Karen brushed past him, knocking him backward into the wall.

  “Hey hey hey! Wash it, will ya?”

  “You go to hell too.”

  A confused Manson stumbled again, then asked to no one in particular, “What the hecks did I dooo?”

  In her own bunk, Lindsey pondered her future.

  Thus far, she and Kara had it better than her mom and Aunt Karen.

  They were held prisoner against their will, sure. And they were forced into slavery, having to cook and clean for vile men they hated with every fiber of their being.

  But at least they weren’t being sexually assaulted.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Both had heard grumblings that some of the men were plotting against Manson.

  Not because they didn’t like the man, though they certainly didn’t.

  No, it was said they didn’t like some of his policies.

  Specifically, his insistence that certain women were off-limits to the men.

  The men reasoned that with Manson out of the way they’d be able to run roughshod over the women.

  Kara and Lindsey hated Manson as much as anyone.

  It wouldn’t break either of their hearts if the men succeeded in their coup, or if Manson was killed in the process.

  At the same time, though, they didn’t want to think about what would happen in the aftermath.

  Parker was a stronger leader than Manson. He’d be left in charge.

  But if he left Manson’s “hands-off” policy in place, to protect the women, would the men turn on him next?

  It was a chilling prospect, and one which terrified them.

  That was why Lindsey even brought up the possibility of an escape.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said one day out of the blue.

  “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to my Aunt Karen’s farm. As far as we know, none of Manson’s men know where it is, or even that it exists. Maybe we can go there and hide out.”

  “Yeah, or maybe they’d follow us there and drag us back or shoot us so we can’t go after the law.”

  “Would you rather just stay here and hope for the best? We did that when the brothers were still alive. When they assured us that no one could ever break into the bunker. That it was invincible. How’d that work out for us?”

  “But how would we get out of here?”

  “Easy. We just climb out of the bunker and make a run for it. And we do it at night when all the men are either asleep or drunk or paying cards in the day room.”

  “Lind, there are land mines out there.”

  “I know that. But I heard Santos and Bennett talking about how they attacked us by riding on a bulldozer. How they drove it right up to the pillbox. It exploded the mines underneath the bulldozer’s tracks.

  “One of them… Parker, I think, went out later that day and backed the bulldozer back into the field. They said he just walked along the bulldozer’s tracks to get back to the pillbox. It was safe to walk there because all the mines in the tracks had already exploded.

  “When they took the bodies out of the pillbox they did the same thing. They followed the bulldozer’s tracks.

  “Kara, we can do the same thing.”

  “But it’ll be dark. What if we can’t see the tracks? What if we step away from the tracks in the dark? Lindsey I have my baby to consider. I don’t want her to die in an explosion. And I sure don’t want to die myself and leave her here at the mercy of these animals.”

  It was something Lindsey had considered, and didn’t have a good solution for.

  “And what about the others? Your mom and your aunt and your cousins? What will Manson and his men do to them when they find out we’ve gone? Will they take out their rage on them?

  “As bad as it is, I couldn’t live with myself if someone else was executed or beaten because I escaped.”

  “Look,” Lindsey said. “I know my plan isn’t perfect. I know there’s a lot of bugs to work out of it. That’s why I’m asking for your help. Help me work out the details. Help me make the plan better.

  “But I’m going, one way or the other. Whether the plan is perfect or not, I’m going. With or without you. Because once Manson’s out of the picture the others may rethink things. They may think we’re fair game after all.”

  Chapter 17

  A couple of days passed, as they tend to do, and young Beth was still struggling with the deaths of the mysterious traveler and her young child.

  “I guess what I can’t get over that she was my age,” Beth told her father as they shared the rig’s wagoneer’s seat.

  “She must have had a lot of the same hopes and dreams that I have. She w
as probably looking forward to having her own children some day. I’ll bet she had a favorite doll, and I’ll bet she loved watching the stars at night with her mom and talking about their future together.

  “It’s a shame it all had to end so quickly. Now she won’t have a chance to do any of that.”

  “Where are a lot of people who’d say she’s better off dying,” Dave said. “At least she’s no longer in pain. At least she doesn’t have to worry about bad men coming along and robbing her and her mom of what few things they had. Or of running out of water to drink or food to eat.”

  “What do you think, Daddy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think we should just end it all? Shoot ourselves in the head like a lot of whole families did? Like Adriana did when her daughter died? So we no longer have to deal with the world the way it’s become lately?”

  “No, honey. I honestly don’t.

  “I honestly believe that the world will get better over time. That all the bad guys will go away, either because they go to jail or because the good guys shoot them all. Remember, the good guys outnumber the bad, and we’ve got guns too.

  “I believe eventually things will get back to normal. That there will be a lot less food, because crops have to be farmed by hand now. But there will be a lot fewer people to eat the food, so it’ll even out.”

  “Do you think the cars will ever run again?”

  “In your lifetime? I don’t know. Some will, I suppose. I mean, for those who know how to do it and can find the parts they need, they could get some running now.

  “Whether they get them all running again depends on whether there are enough people willing to take manufacturing jobs.

  “And people to train them to make new parts.

  “And some type of monetary system to pay them, because they’re not going to work for free.

  “If I was to venture a guess, I’d say that for the rest of your life you’ll probably see a working car or pickup driving by occasionally. But it won’t be an everyday thing.

  “Your children, though, will probably see a lot more of them.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever get married, Daddy? I mean, I don’t see many boys about my age anymore. Most of them are dead now.”

  “Oh, I think there are more out there than you realize.

  “You haven’t seen a lot of them lately because you’ve been traveling for months. And not many families travel these highways.

  “We wouldn’t be, if we didn’t have to get back to your mother and sister.

  “Most families are sticking to the cities where it’s safer. Where they have yards to grow food in. Where they can band together to protect themselves against marauders.

  “And eventually we’ll do that too. Either in San Antonio or at your Aunt Karen’s place.

  “So yes, I think that someday you’ll meet a boy and fall in love and eventually you’ll get married and have your own kids. And I think they’ll have it much easier than we’re having it right now.”

  “I sure do miss San Antonio.”

  “Whoa, honey. You sure know how to change subjects, don’t you?”

  “Well, you mentioned San Antonio. And it made me think of all the friends I had down there.

  “I wonder how many made it.”

  “I don’t know, honey. I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Most of them probably didn’t.

  “And others probably left the area. Remember that a lot of people in San Antonio were military people who were stationed at one of the bases there. But they had their roots in other cities around the country.

  “When we get back there, if we go back, I’ll take you around to see how many of your old friends we can find. But if we can’t find them, I wouldn’t automatically assume they’re dead. It would probably be better to assume they walked to another city to be with their families.

  “It’ll be much easier for you to deal with that way.”

  “Do you think Samantha made it?”

  “Who is Samantha?”

  “You remember. You dropped me off at her birthday party once. And when you came back to pick me up I introduced you to her.”

  “I’m sorry, Peanut. I don’t remember.”

  “Or Angela. She only lived a couple of blocks from us. The school bus used to drop her off at the stop before ours.”

  “We’ll walk over there if we move back to San Antonio and see if anyone answers the door.”

  “Or Robert and his little sister Amy…”

  This one Dave had an answer for.

  “I’m pretty sure that Robert and Amy are still alive, honey. We’ll try to visit them too.”

  “How come you think they’re alive but not the others?”

  “Well, because I knew their dad. His name was Ronald. He was a prepper like me. We used to share some ideas sometimes.

  “I’m pretty sure he had plenty of food and supplies set aside for his family, so they didn’t have to get out in the big bad world.”

  “I met their dad once. After Mom took us to a PTA meeting. Amy and me went to the snack table to get a cupcake. He yelled at her and took the cupcake away from her. He said it would ruin her dinner.

  “I thought, sheesh, don’t have a cow, man. It’s only a cupcake. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Dave smiled.

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “No. I wanted to. But he was scary. He wasn’t a very nice man.”

  Chapter 18

  The world moves in odd and often mysterious ways.

  Many things happen which seem to defy odds and are considered wild and almost impossible coincidences.

  But if you think about it, literally trillions of things happen all over the world at quite literally the exact same time. Every second of every day.

  The laws of probability dictate that of all those things happening, some of them will line up and appear to be coincidences. Out of the vast majority of things that don’t line up and appear coincidental, only a few of them do.

  In reality they aren’t coincidence at all. They just are what they are.

  At the exact moment Dave and Beth were riding slowly along on a New Mexico highway, talking about a man named Ronald Martinez, that very same Ronald Martinez was approaching Dave and Beth’s house in San Antonio.

  He wasn’t coming for a social call, or to check and see whether Dave and his family had survived.

  Or to borrow a cup of sugar, for that matter.

  Three years before Dave and Ronald were casual friends, having struck up a conversation while in a sporting goods store while both were purchasing MREs.

  Preppers are by and large friendly and helpful to one another for a couple of reasons.

  One is that when the stuff hits the fan, it helps to have friends among the survivors. Many things, following a worldwide catastrophe, are just easier to accomplish with others. Security, for example. It’s much easier to protect a compound with ten guns instead of one.

  Another good reason, at least from a prepper’s point of view, is that the more people a prepper can help to get themselves ready, the fewer people the prepper has to worry about trying to steal his stuff.

  But there is a peril to consider as well.

  Every time a prepper trains someone else, that someone else automatically knows certain things about the prepper.

  For example, if a prepper shows a neighbor how to make mass amounts of dried beef and how to bury it safely in his back yard, then the neighbor may or may not take such action.

  But whether he does or not, he knows the prepper has some buried in his own yard.

  Beth’s friends Amy and Robert were in dire straits.

  Their mother was constantly sick and unable to tend to her garden.

  Their father Ronald was not only, as Beth contended, a very angry and hostile man.

  He was also a terrible gardener.

  All the food they’d socked away when he was a prepper was gone now.

  All of the tractor trailers
within four miles of their home had been picked clean.

  He resorted to stealing from his neighbors, and lying in wait to rob others who’d traveled great distances to gather food.

  It wasn’t enough. His family was on the verge of starving to death.

  His wife had already asked him to shoot her, so she wouldn’t cut into their meager provisions.

  He refused.

  There had to be a way, he maintained.

  Then, three days before, he saw the book where he’d once tossed it into the corner of the room.

  And he had an epiphany.

  The book was titled Prepping on a Budget.

  It once belonged to a man named Dave Spear, before he loaned it to Ronald.

  “I’ve used this book to turn my house into a fortress. Now I no longer need it. Maybe it’ll help you too.”

  It was considered the casual prepper’s Bible. An essential guide to help one who lives in the suburbs prepare for an uncertain future.

  Ronald had taken the guide and used some of its ideas.

  But that wasn’t why it would help him now.

  It would help him now by reminding him there was another prepper who lived nearby.

  Another man who’d been in the prepping game much longer than Ronald.

  Who conceivably had much more time to stash considerably more provisions than Ronald had.

  And who almost certainly had some left.

  It was at that moment, three days before, that Ronald resolved himself to finding Dave’s house, murdering Dave and his family, and stealing everything Dave had.

  Because Beth had summed Ronald Martinez up perfectly: he was indeed a very mean man.

  He’d only been to Dave’s house a couple of times, and had never been inside it.

  But he remembered where it was.

  There was a three-quarter moon on this particular night.

  Even without night-vision goggles, prized among preppers but very expensive, he could see where he was going.

  Of course, if Dave was equipped with such goggles Ronald would be at a disadvantage.

  But he was beyond desperation. He had no choice but to proceed.

  He watched Dave’s house for quite some time from the cover of bushes at the house across the street.