Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3) Page 6

  On this particular night he dreamed of a girl. She was a girl he’d only spent a couple of hours with, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. She was gorgeous and sweet. And that in itself shouldn’t have affected him so, because the Texas Tech campus was full of girls who were gorgeous and sweet.

  But Sarah Anna Speer was something else too.

  Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  He’d wondered many times since that night they met whether he’d finally found the one girl in the world for him.

  Perhaps that was why she invaded his thoughts twenty times a day.

  Perhaps that was why he saw her everywhere he turned.

  He awoke about six, which was pushing it just a bit. It was a twenty minute ride from his apartment in west Lubbock to the Tech campus where he’d meet Brandy and the rest of her team.

  He’d wanted to get an early start so he had time to check the message boards outside the school’s administrative building before he started his workday.

  But he’d never make it in time now without pushing Trigger. And running at more than a slow gallop on city streets could be dangerous for a horse. Their hooves could not grip the pavement, and there was precious little grass along the way to run him on.

  Running on pavement was a hazard, for the rider as well as the horse. For even a sure-footed mount could lose his grip and slide, often breaking a leg or a hip in the process. Riders were often thrown or crushed beneath the full weight of the horse as well.

  The riders usually got the best of it though. They could still get a fractured leg set. They could hobble around on it for a few weeks and then be almost good as new.

  Horses with broken legs or hips were most often put down.

  So no, Randy wouldn’t try to check the message boards on this particular morning. He’d do it later, when the day’s work was done.

  He was disappointed.

  But not so disappointed he’d risk Trigger’s health to gain a few minutes time.

  As he and Trigger entered the campus it started to rain.

  “Oh, great.”

  He had to admit, though, that it felt good. And rain in a place like Lubbock, Texas was always welcome. It was a farming community which never seemed to have enough water. And since most of its crops in the years ahead would be grown within the city commons, the neighborhoods could use as much precipitation as they could get.

  He looked to the sky and said, “Bring it on, Lord. We can use every drop.”

  Chapter 17

  The first time he’d met with Brandy and her crew after Major Shultz’s death was a bit awkward. They hadn’t yet met Randy when he went through the grieving process after Tom Cohen’s murder. Therefore they didn’t know how he’d react to Shultz’s assassination.

  People grieve in different ways. Many, if not most, are introspective and quiet. They spend a lot of time lost within their own thoughts. They isolate themselves from others and grieve, for the most part, alone.

  Brandy and her crew assumed Randy was the same way and gave him wide berth. They told him how sorry they were for his loss and then simply went out of their way to stay away from him.

  It wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t that they didn’t care, for they liked Randy tremendously. He’d won their hearts early on and they now considered him a good friend.

  But they assumed he’d want his solitude and space as he went through his grieving process.

  Had they bothered to ask him, they’d have learned the opposite was true.

  Randy was a man who needed reassurance when the chips were down. In the most trying times of his life he sought solace in others. Others who would prop him up; assure him that things were okay. Or that they would get better over time.

  Under the present circumstances, however, he had no choice but to suffer alone.

  In the absence of human comfort and limited conversation, he tried to lose himself in the task at hand.

  The Home Depot where they’d been picking up plastic garbage cans to deliver around the neighborhood had been pretty much played out.

  Not to worry.

  A block east of the Home Depot was a store Randy had never even known existed.

  It was called Containers and Tubs Inc.

  And like its name implied, it sold nothing but containers and tubs.

  Its likely customers were consumers who, tired of the messes their spare bedrooms and garages had become, had resolved to do something about them. They’d go to this retailer, buy dozens of plastic storage tubs, then organize their things in the tubs and stack them together.

  Now, in post-apocalyptic Lubbock, they’d serve a radically different purpose.

  Each of the tubs would hold about ten gallons of rain water. Each of them had airtight snap-on lids that would prevent the water from evaporating.

  In short, the tubs were ideal for collecting the rain which would be needed to help irrigate crops in the late spring and summer, when rainfalls would be few and far between.

  The back part of the store was an expansive warehouse which held hundreds of such tubs in a variety of colors and sizes.

  It would do quite nicely in helping them with their project.

  When they arrived at the store they found the glass panes in front had been shattered by looters.

  No surprise there.

  The surprise was already stricken upon the looters, who’d wasted their time breaking into a store that had little to eat or drink.

  But it did give Randy and Brandy the access they needed to the store’s stock.

  The wagon they were on wasn’t big. It was patterned after the covered wagons which traversed the plains of Texas a hundred and fifty years before. The cargo bed was roughly forty eight square feet. It was relatively small in the grand scheme of things, because pioneers in the old days had to be careful not to over task the two-horse team which pulled the wagon.

  It wasn’t a good thing for a horse to work himself to death pulling too heavy a load a hundred miles from the nearest settlement in Comanche territory.

  Texas Tech University had several of the replica wagons, painted in the black and red colors of their sports teams and sporting their trademark “double t.”

  For many years they’d used them on recruiting events, tailgating parties and in local parades.

  For their current purpose, the canvas covers were removed from the backs to allow the cargo to be stacked a bit higher.

  Brandy and the other drivers were still mindful of the weight of the cargo, and still careful not to work their horses too much.

  But plastic storage tubs weren’t heavy at all. They could be stacked four feet high without placing undue burden on the beasts.

  Randy, in an effort to get his mind off the grief he was feeling, threw himself into the work. In twenty minutes he’d hauled so many empty tubs from the warehouse to the front of the store they’d have to come back a second time to get them all.

  But it didn’t make him feel any better.

  The only thing that would make him feel better was time.

  After Brandy’s crew tied down the load and pronounced it ready to go, Randy asked Brandy, “Where are we headed?”

  “41st Street. Twenty two hundred block. Lead the way. And Randy, are you okay?”

  “I will be. As soon as I can make sense of the world.”

  Randy and Trigger took point, and Brandy drove the team of horses directly behind him.

  Brandy leaned over and said to Amy, riding on the bench seat beside her, “I feel so bad for him. I hope he doesn’t find out what I believe to be the case: that the world no longer makes any sense. People just take what they want now and hurt whoever they have to.”

  “I hope it’s not that way forever.”

  “Me neither, honey.”

  Chapter 18

  “Wish you were here an hour ago before the rain stopped.”

  A squat man in his early fifties shook Brandy’s hand as she stepped down from the wagon. He made the rounds o
f her two man team and saved Randy for last.

  “They say everything in life is timing,” Brandy responded. “Apparently ours is a little off today.”

  “Well, the bright side is, we’ll be set for the next rain. I’m Jack. I’m the block leader for this block and the next one. We’ve combined forces to make things easier for everybody.”

  “I’m Brandy. This is Randy, Amy and Amanda. How’s your operation going?”

  “Good so far. We’ve cut down all the trees in our front yards and tilled them all up. We’ve identified the houses which are still occupied and have no fireplaces. Each of those families have been assigned a vacant house with a fireplace where they can relocate to before winter sets in. The trees we’ve cut down will provide us all the firewood we need to stay warm for the next several winters if this thing lasts that long.”

  Brandy noticed that all the pavement in front of the two blocks of houses was covered with tree branches, some stacked head high.

  “It was the only place we had to put the wood. Of course, after the leaves finish falling off and blow away, they’ll look less like walls.”

  And indeed, the piles of trees on both sides of the street did look rather imposing.

  “What did you do with all the cars?”

  Every single car, from the driveways as well as the street, was gone.

  “The men got together and pushed them, one at a time, down around the corner to the big strip mall. We parked them there, lined up all nice and neat, to get them out of the way, so our mechanics can work on them.

  “Didn’t have much else to do.

  “We were gonna line them up in the alley, but somebody suggested we plant a row of fruit-bearing trees in the alley instead.”

  Randy asked, “What are your mechanics doing with them, exactly? They’ll never run again.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. We’ve got a couple of backyard mechanics who swear they can get at least a couple running again by collecting the parts that didn’t get damaged. ‘Cannibalizing’, they call it. In my view, it probably won’t work, since the parts from one car that survived probably won’t fit on another, but they’re giving it a go anyway.

  “They say they’re working on the most common vehicles. Like Ford 150 pickups.

  “This being Texas, there’s Ford 150s all over the darn place. Many are the same make and model. If they can find an undamaged electronic ignition on one and an undamaged starter on another one they can put them on another one that has an undamaged generator.”

  “That still leaves the battery. That’s gonna be the hardest thing to find undamaged.”

  “Yes. But we’ve already found a couple of them. On the floor at a local repair shop.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Bud, he’s our lead mechanic, said he thought the reason they survived was because they weren’t hooked up to an electrical system. Either that or they were just lucky.”

  “How many vehicles do you hope to get running?”

  “Why don’t you talk to Bud? He’s over at the strip mall. Spends most of his days down there. Says it gives him something to do all day. He can tell you better than I can.”

  Randy was impressed. At least enough to go speak to Bud after they finished unloading and handing out the tubs.

  This block, more than all the others, seemed to have captured the teamwork and camaraderie all the city’s citizens would need to survive.

  “Now then,” Brandy interjected, effectively ending the men’s conversation. “Where do you want us to unload these tubs?”

  “Let’s stack them right here. I’ll have the residents come over and pick them up.”

  “Has anyone from the city talked to you about how to set them up?”

  “No. They said they’d be coming, but that’s about it.”

  “Place them under the eaves of each house, whether the houses are occupied or not. The rainwater that falls on the roof will collect in the tubs and then you can use the water during the dry spells.

  “If there’s a rain gutter on the house, block it so the water doesn’t run out the downspout. Then poke holes in it above each tub so the water falls there instead.

  “Be sure to place the lids on each tub between rainfalls so the water doesn’t evaporate before you can use it.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Yes. If the roof doesn’t have a gutter system, nail some two by fours along the edge of the roof to channel the rainwater. Leave periodic breaks between the two by fours for the water to channel out, and place the tubs beneath those breaks.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  “Also, if you tear down any abandoned houses to use as firewood or building supplies, be wary of the sheetrock.”

  “Why?”

  “If you just throw the broken sheetrock into a pile, it’ll slowly disintegrate and will wash into your soil. It’ll kill your plants at the roots.”

  “I never thought of that. What do we do with it?”

  “Put it in a big pile in the center of the slab after you tear the house down. Then get a couple of boxes of kitchen trash bags and fill them with dirt. They make effective sandbags, and you can use them to build a big dam around the sheetrock. The dam will catch the rainwater and hold it there until it evaporates.”

  “Okay. We haven’t had to tear down any structures yet, but if we do we’ll heed that advice. Any idea when the city will be around to pass out the seeds?”

  “They’re going to do it around the middle of March. They want to make sure it’s late enough to keep from losing all the crops in case there’s a late freeze.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to go ahead and pass them out? And just tell the residents to wait until mid-March to plant them?”

  “That was their original plan. But then they realized that some blocks might jump the gun. They might go ahead and plant early and then lose all their crops. Then they’d have to rely on you and the other blocks that did it right and waited, and expect you to feed them as well as your own.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  As they got the last of the tubs unloaded, Brandy asked Randy if he was ready to go back for another load.

  “Yes. But if you don’t mind I’d like to take a detour to the strip mall where they lined up all their cars.”

  “Okay. But why?”

  “I just had an idea I want to run by this Bud guy.”

  “Lead the way. I don’t have a clue where the strip mall is you’re talking about, but I’m right behind you.”

  Randy took point again and Brandy followed him to the end of the next block. As they rode, both were marveled by the efficiency of this particular operation. By removing all the cars and cutting down all the trees they were able to maximize their growing space, yet still provide for the comfort of their residents. The cut trees they had neatly piled on each side of the roadway would provide enough wood for at least three or four winters and probably more.

  Randy hoped the world would be sane and back to normal by then.

  He’d settle for having the power restored.

  Chapter 19

  “You must be Bud.”

  The man had crawled so far into the engine compartment of a Chevrolet Impala both of his feet were off the ground.

  At the mention of his name he was so startled he hit his head on the car’s hood and growled a few choice curse words.

  “I’m sorry,” Randy continued. “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. I’m a jumpy guy by nature. And I guess my hearing’s going. You’d think I’d have heard a horse’s hooves on hard pavement and a wagon full of pretty girls walking up on me.”

  Randy stepped off Trigger and shook the man’s hand.

  Bud saw the tattered old Ranger badge pinned to Randy’s shirt and remarked, “That badge looks like it pre-dates you just a bit.”

  “I’m the fifth generation in my family to wear it.”

  “Damn! I’m guessing that old
badge would have some tales to tell if it could speak.”

  “Yes sir. I reckon it would.”

  “What can I do for you, Ranger? If you’re gonna tell me you have too many girl friends and you’re looking to get rid of your excess, I’ll take all three of ‘em. Wouldn’t want to pick just one and break the other two hearts, you understand.”

  The old man winked at Brandy, who rewarded him with a warm smile.

  “Only thing better than a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman with a smile on her face.”

  Randy decided to stop the foolishness before the old flirt decided to propose to one of the women.

  “I heard you’re trying to get some of your vehicles running again.”

  “That’s the plan, young man. And I’m damn close to getting it done, too.”

  “How are you doing it, exactly?”

  “Well, it’s not a hard concept, really. You see, there’s only a handful of items on these vehicles which short-circuited. Typically the batteries, starters, electronic ignitions, generators and alternators.”

  “Sounds like a lot of parts to me.”

  “Not if you consider the dozens of other components that make up these vehicles that are still working fine.

  “We knew once we started examining them that some of the components actually survived the EMPs. We don’t know how or why, but it’s a fact.

  “Shoot, we found two pickups parked across the street from each other. Same make and model. The only difference between the two was the color. Yet one of them was completely toasted. The starter on the other survived.

  “I’m not enough of a brainiac to try to figure out why. Shoot, I’m not a scientist. I’m just an old boy who has a fondness for working on cars.

  “Well what I did was, I pulled that good starter off that pickup and used it to replace a bad starter of another one. I gave the bad one to a buddy of mine who used to rebuild starters as a kid. He’s gonna replace the brushes and core and see if he can give it a second life.

  “Meanwhile, the pickup I put the good one into still needs a working generator. So I’m scouring all the pickups I can find of that particular make and model. When I find it, there’s no reason to believe I can’t get the darn thing running again.”