The Final Chapter Page 7

  “We mentioned it to her this morning. She thinks it’s a great idea. She asked us what took us so long to admit we were in love.”

  Millicent said, “And back to the whole ‘Why do we need six bedrooms’ question, the house we’re hoping for is on the corner. One side of it fronts Highway 83.”

  “So?”

  Millicent turned to Charles and said, “Go get the sign and show them, baby.”

  Charles was already behaving like a married man. He immediately followed Millicent’s instructions and darted off.

  Linda and Tillie looked at one another and Tillie asked in a whisper, “Did she just call him baby?”

  “She did, she did.”

  Despite their comments they were glad the kids’ close friendship had finally blossomed into love.

  And they would indeed keep a close eye on them.

  While Charles was gone Linda got up and walked across the room.

  She wrapped her arms around Millicent and hugged her tightly.

  “Um…” Millicent asked, “Thank you. But what was that for?”

  “I just wanted to let you know how proud I am that our little girl is growing up.

  “But… you’re still too young to get married.”

  Charles returned carrying a large hand-painted sign.

  It read:

  ELECTRONICS REPAIR

  All Work Guaranteed For Six Months

  Blue Money, Gold and Silver Accepted.

  I ALSO BUY GREEN MONEY

  “We’re going to post this on the Highway 83 side of the house. And two of the rooms are going to be for Charles’ business.”

  Tillie was impressed and her smile said so.

  Linda was impressed as well.

  But she had one question.

  “Why on earth are you buying green money? It’s not any good anymore, remember?”

  “Oh, I know. I’m not paying very much. Only ten cents blue for a hundred bills green, regardless of denomination.”

  “But why do you want it at all?”

  “Because most people are using it as toilet paper or for tinder to start their fires. It’s disappearing at an alarming rate.

  “Someday, either in our lifetimes or our children’s lifetimes, it’ll be very rare.

  “I think people will collect it, and it’ll be worth much more than I’m paying for it.

  “You always tell us we should think ahead and plan for the future. Well, I’m thinking ahead and planning for the future.”

  Tillie still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea.

  “Millicent, honey, do you think it’s safe for the two of you to be out there alone, at such a young age?”

  “Well, like I said, we’re really hoping you would move in with us. Aren’t we Charles?”

  Charles didn’t hesitate for a second.

  “Oh, yes. You and Hero. You said yourself he’s the best security system in the world.

  “But he’s getting so old…”

  “Yes, but his hearing is still sharp. He’s always the first one to bark when someone approaches the compound. Even if he can’t run anymore, he can still alert us when somebody’s outside.

  “And if you want, we can take one of the puppies with us too.”

  Tillie asked Linda, “You feel like a road trip?”

  They were on the same wavelength.

  “To Riley Road? Sure. I haven’t been house-hunting in a long time.”

  Millicent went to find Tom, to ask if they could borrow his old Ford sedan.

  In her absence, Tillie warned Charles, “Don’t take this as a ‘yes.’ You’ll never convince me that you’re old enough to be married at fourteen and fifteen.

  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be curious. I’d like to see this house.”

  “Maybe a compromise would be in order,” Linda suggested.

  Charles cocked an eyebrow.

  “What kind of compromise?”

  “Well, maybe the three of you could move into the house together.

  “Not as a couple,” she was careful to stress. “But rather as a family.

  “You could open your business every day and the three of you could live in the house at the same time.

  “You’d have separate bedrooms and Tillie would make sure there was no funny business going on.

  “It would give you a taste of what it would be like living together without being married.

  “It would be sort of a marriage light.”

  Linda smiled at “marriage light.”

  Still, she liked the idea.

  Charles didn’t.

  Charles sulked all the way to Riley Road.

  -21-

  John pulled up in front of 4508 Pine Nut Avenue.

  The front yard was terribly overgrown with weeds.

  The front windows were all broken.

  The front door had been taken off its hinges and was lying on the front porch.

  This was the house John went to so he could arrest Bill for cannibalism.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite true.

  John remembered feeling frustrated that Texas had no statute against cannibalism.

  He’d planned, therefore, to arrest the cannibal for abuse of a human corpse.

  It didn’t have the same oomph to it, but would serve the same purpose.

  It would get a sadistic animal off the streets.

  Then he met Bill and realized he wasn’t dealing with a despicable madman after all.

  He was dealing with a boy in a man’s body who had no tools to survive on his own. One who was eating human flesh simply because he saw no other way to live from day to day.

  He walked through a house filled from wall to wall in knee-deep trash.

  As he moved through the mess he could hear creatures scurrying beneath it.

  He assumed they were mice until he made it halfway through the semi-darkness of the living room and saw a huge rat on the back of the couch staring at him.

  His thoughts immediately went to R.J. Salinas, another friend he needed to visit while he was in town.

  Not because Mr. Salinas was a rat.

  But rather because Mr. Salinas was the man who came up with a rather unorthodox way of dealing with inner city survivors who’d run out of food and were starving.

  He taught them how to kill, cook and eat rats.

  When John first met Salinas and learned what he advocated he was repulsed.

  Salinas worked hard to convince him his idea was a good one.

  “The rat population has exploded in the inner city. The city is desperate to get control of the situation before they start spreading disease.

  “At the same time the people are starving.

  “And guess what? Rats are not only easy to catch, they’re also full of protein.

  “It’s a no brainer, really.”

  John made a mental note to visit Salinas after he finished his current project.

  As for that current project, it promised to be a daunting one.

  It was mid-morning.

  The smart thing to do was to work in the rooms on the east side of the house first, to take advantage of the still rising sun.

  In the late afternoon that side of the house would be in shadows, lessening the light coming through the windows.

  And window light was the only light he had.

  Oh, he had a flashlight in the pickup with working batteries the Sheriff’s Office had bartered from a prepper in Kerrville.

  But he wanted to save those batteries until they were needed in an emergency.

  This mission was important, but not an emergency.

  And if he worked it right the light streaming through the windows would be enough.

  To maximize it, though, he ripped down the curtains and tossed them haphazardly to the side.

  Next came the adjustable blinds.

  He tossed them onto a ratty bed.

  The crashing sound they made sent something scurrying not far from his feet.

  Slowly, methodicall
y, John performed a grid search, working his way across the room one section at a time.

  He was looking for several things at once: pill bottles, pharmacy receipts, those little handouts one sometimes receives with directions for taking a new medicine.

  He’d even settle for bills from Eddie’s doctor’s office or co-pay bills from his insurance company.

  An hour after he started swimming through the mess he felt the unmistakable sensation of a mouse running up his leg.

  Now, John Castro wasn’t a squeamish man.

  He was a former United States Marine, for crying out loud.

  But there are some things that will make a brave man jump.

  One of those is feeling a mouse run up his leg.

  John leapt atop the queen-sized bed and jumped up and down on it, screaming like a little girl.

  At the same time he beat the lump working its way up his inner thigh unmercifully.

  Whether he killed it or dislodged it, he didn’t care.

  He just didn’t want it to reach his groin, where a bite would be much more agonizing than a bite on his leg.

  The lump disappeared and he freaked out a bit, not knowing where it went.

  Then it appeared on the bed.

  It was a tiny creature, actually.

  Not the beaver-sized monster he’d imagined it to be.

  The mouse was dazed but not dead, and for a short second or two, he looked up at John.

  If looks could kill, John would have immediately fallen over dead.

  John wasn’t happy the mouse ran up his leg.

  The mouse was even less happy to be beaten and forced back down again.

  The hateful look he gave to John didn’t last long before he disappeared beneath a crumpled old newspaper.

  John could have left it alone, but he was one of those guys who always had to have the last word.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, same to you fella!”

  Then he felt foolish for yelling at a rodent.

  -22-

  John pressed on, and a few minutes later found an old sneaker.

  He knew that tying the legs of one’s pants was very effective in keeping scorpions and snakes off of one’s legs and out of one’s private parts.

  If it worked that well in the desert, he reasoned, it should work in an urban environment as well.

  He removed the black shoelace from the sneaker and tied it tightly over his blue jeans and around his left ankle.

  Now, in addition to everything else he was searching for, he needed the second half of the set of sneakers.

  He never found it, but he found another sneaker from a different set.

  “How in the world did you ever get dressed?” he asked Eddie, or Bill, or whoever once occupied this room.

  The lace on this shoe was neon green.

  It was nowhere near a match to the first lace, but that didn’t matter.

  He tied it tightly around the ankle of his artificial leg.

  By mid-afternoon he was covered with sweat.

  And crushed mosquitoes, flies and dirt.

  He was miserable and getting discouraged.

  He was more than halfway through the house, still working slowly and methodically, working a grid map only he could see in his mind.

  All he’d found thus far was a bill from an insurance company.

  They wanted Eddie to pay a twenty dollar co-pay from a visit he’d made to a Dr. Reinhardt two weeks before.

  The problem was, it didn’t say who Dr. Reinhardt was or what he specialized in.

  But he was one step closer.

  An hour later he found a pill bottle which once contained Depotane and had Eddie’s name on it.

  Once again he muttered to himself.

  “What in heck is Depotane, Eddie, and what did you take it for?”

  Not surprisingly, the ghost of Eddie didn’t answer.

  That was a good thing.

  The only other thing in the world John disliked more than mice were ghosts.

  By the time he crawled out into the fresh air and setting sun of the outdoors he had the names of three doctors and one medication.

  That may or may not be much help.

  His shirt was drenched in sweat. He took it off and used the inside of it, which certainly wasn’t clean but wasn’t coated with dirt like the outside was.

  He used the inside of his shirt to wipe some of the dirt and sweat from his face and arms, then tossed it into the back of the pickup.

  While a gentle breeze helped dry his body, he took in the sunset.

  John once traveled all over the world when he was in the Marines.

  Someone once asked him how many places he visited while in the Corps and he quite honestly said, “I don’t know. I never counted them.”

  That prompted him to pull out a world atlas and he did just that: he counted the places he’d visited.

  It turned out to be thirty one of the United States and twelve countries.

  And in all his travels, he still never saw a sunset which came close to matching the spectacle laid out in front of him.

  He’d always told Hannah that Texas had the prettiest girls and the prettiest sunsets in the world.

  And no one would ever convince him otherwise.

  Once his body was more or less dry he climbed into the seat of the pickup, surprised his pants seemed bound as he sat.

  He looked down and realized he still had shoelaces tied tightly around his ankles.

  In his filth and misery he’d forgotten all around them.

  He drove back to Baker Street and stopped for a couple of minutes to shoot the breeze with Frank Woodard. Frank was pulling his turn as sentry, manning the entry point at the end of the street.

  “Scarlett told me where you went, John. Any luck?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. You ever heard of a medication called Depotane, and know what it was used for?”

  “Never heard of it, sorry. I used to take a lot of meds, but that wasn’t one of them.”

  “Used to, as in you’re still supposed to take them but can’t get them anymore?”

  “Good guess. Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

  “I also got the names of three doctors. Reinhardt, Martinez and Quincy. Ever heard of any of them?”

  “You got first names?”

  “Nope. The bills only had their last names and phone numbers.”

  “Why didn’t you just call them?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Sorry. Robert Martinez was my diabetic doctor. But Martinez is a common name in San Antonio. I’m sure there were several of them who were doctors. I’ve never heard of doctors named Reinhardt or Quincy.

  “Sorry I can’t help you.”

  “Hey, you tried.

  “Are any of the medicines you used to take critical? I can stop and dig through the trailers on my way back to Kerrville and see if I can find some.”

  “Don’t bother. Word is they all got cleaned out a long time ago.”

  “So how are you managing to get by without them?”

  “I’m doing what everybody else is doing. Trying to eat better and exercise more. Trying not to get stressed out so my blood pressure stays low.

  “And in my case I go over to Santa Rosa every sixty days for a phlebotomy.

  “A what?”

  “A phlebotomy. They take a pint of blood from my body and throw it away.”

  “Okay… and just why would they want to do that?”

  “I have a condition called hemochromatosis. My blood stores way more iron than I need, and the excess is harmful to my organs.

  “I used to take medication for it, but since the medication is no longer available I had to go to Plan B.

  “Plan B is removing a pint of blood every sixty days to lower my iron content.”

  “Sounds like a pain in the butt.”

  -23-

  Frank smiled.

  “Actually it’s a pain in the arm. But it’s not bad as long as you’re not afraid of needles.
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  “My only other medical issue is diabetes, but I control that now with my diet.”

  “That’s good, Frank. I want you to live to be a hundred. That’s what? Three more years or so?”

  “Very funny, smart aleck. I’m only seventy one. And I could still kick your ass in a fair fight.

  “Remember, I used to be a Marine too.”

  “You know, Frank, I believe you could.”

  “You better hurry over to Scarlett and Rhett’s. I think they’re probably waiting up for you.”

  “Good night, my friend.”

  “Good night John.”

  John tiptoed into the Butler house, not sure whether the children were sleeping.

  Tara was five now, and Ashley was two.

  John knew that because he’d asked Ashley the day before and the little guy held up two fingers.

  John said, “You’re either two years old or the world’s smallest hippie.”

  Ashley didn’t get the hippie reference, but helped clarify the situation by saying, “I two.”

  Scarlett greeted her friend with, “Well I declare, John. You look like you’ve been wallowing in slop with the pigs.”

  “I feel like it too. I’m hoping you’ve got some hot water in your tank.”

  “You’ll have to settle for warm. We haven’t run the generator since this morning.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “It’ll have to. You’re not sitting in my couch like that!”

  The following morning Rhett and John drove over to Santa Rosa Hospital.

  They weren’t sure whether they’d get any cooperation from the hospital staff. Medical people are always very protective of patients’ privacy.

  If Becky were still here they’d have gone to her.

  But Becky was up in Junction now, married to Scott.

  Becky was their backup plan.

  If they were unable to get the information they needed John’s next course of action was to turn the information over to Becky when he returned to Kerrville.

  Once the ham radio was repaired she’d use it to try to locate one of her old friends at the hospital and persuade them to do her a favor.

  As it turned out, though, the backup plan wasn’t necessary.

  They spoke to an aging nurse in the Emergency Room who seemingly knew every doctor in town.