The Journal: Raging Tide: (The Journal Book 4) (11 page)

It didn’t take long.

“What the hell is taking you so long,
George? You get lost?” The back door banged open and a short,
stocky older man stepped impatiently into the dark yard. With the
same swift precision as before, Jim came up from behind and
dispatched him without so much as a sound from either of them. Jim
dropped the body and left it. We circled the house again, staying
below the windows. I was beside the open window and could see well
enough through the curtains to know if I wasn’t careful, from how
he was sitting, this last guy would see me. I rested my rifle on
the sill.

Jim went back to the kitchen door and
knocked. The guy turned to the sound, startled. I saw that Arc Eric
and Rayn always talked about, and I took my shot.

*

We sat with Lee and Kora Goshen at the
dining room table, enjoying a glass of wine from their hidden
cellar. The bodies had been removed and dumped in the woods, which
was too good for that scum from what we were hearing about the
Goshens’ brutal ordeal.

“They showed up four days ago, asking for
water,” Lee was saying. “I told them where the hand pump was and
that they could have as much as they wanted. Even though they had
tried to cover those orange jumpsuits with mud and old jackets, it
was still obvious they were escaped convicts and I knew we had a
problem. After they drank their fill of water, they asked for food,
and when I turned them down, they rushed the house and took over.
We’ve been their slaves since.” He reached over and took his wife’s
hand. “Kora has suffered the most.”

Kora took a sip of wine, straightened her
back, and lifted her chin defiantly. This was one brave lady. “They
took turns with me, sometimes four - five times a day, insisting I
always wear a skirt to make it easier for them to rape me,” she
spat out. “It’ll be a long time before I wear a skirt again!” She
had since showered and changed into jeans and a sweater.

“I guess we came along just in time then,”
Jim was saying. “We would have been down this road sooner, but
we’ve had our own mishaps.” His glance slid over to me.

“I fell in the river,” I confessed, “and
almost drowned. We were delayed an extra day while I fought
hypothermia.”

“Better late than never,” Lee said. He
stood, raising his glass of ruby wine. “A toast to our new best
friends! I don’t know how we will ever thank you enough.” He looked
over at his wife and she nodded ever so slightly. “Will you stay
and be our guests tonight? And for as long as you care to.”

“Thank you,” I said. “At least for tonight
so I can dry out some of my clothes.”

“Wonderful! Then tonight we have steak and
potatoes for dinner,” Kora said.

“Steak?” Jim asked. “
Beef
steak?”

“Yes, we butchered one of the cows two
months ago while it was still cool. That solar array runs a big
freezer. Those three were eating beef twice a day, we were hiding
the good steaks,” Lee grinned.

*

After retrieving the Hummer from down the
road, Jim brought in our duffels and set them in the guest bedroom.
My still soggy boots were set in front of the fireplace where a
roaring fire warmed the spacious living room and my still damp
clothes went into a clothes dryer.

While Lee and Jim brought out and lit the
grill, Kora and I visited their wine cellar and selected two wines
for our steak dinner, a Cabernet and a Zinfandel.

“You two work together very well,” Kora
said. “How long have you been together?”

“I met Jim a year ago when my son and
granddaughter arrived unexpectedly at Sawyer and I had to vouch for
them,” I replied, thinking back to those days. Had it really only
been a year? “Then he showed up at my house in early August,
crashing my wedding. Our friendship was a bit rocky to start, but
eventually we became good friends.” Kora gave me an odd look, like
she wanted to say more.

“Wedding? Forgive my nosiness, but where is
your husband?”

“He died from the flu in December. This trip
is Jim’s idea of therapy for me. Enough about me, how are
you
doing, Kora? I have limited medical supplies, is there
anything you need?”

“As a matter of fact…” she trailed off
momentarily, looking away. “With the repeated rapes, I’m really
sore. I’ve tried using aloe, but it stings.”

“I’ve got some hydrocortisone in my bag,
I’ll get you some. How are you doing…otherwise?” I asked
delicately.

“You mean emotionally and mentally?” Kora
went silent for a few minutes. “To keep my sanity, I would put
myself in a different zone while it was happening, and to keep my
emotional balance I got angry. I never let the anger show, they
only saw indifference. I think the indifference confused them and
defused some of their lust. Now I can be angry though and that pile
of wood out back that needs splitting will be a good outlet!” She
smiled again, this time more easily.

*

Dinner was incredible.

“I can’t remember the last time I had such a
perfect steak,” Jim said. “Thank you, Lee, Kora.” He tipped his
newly filled wine glass at them. The ribeye steaks were done medium
rare over the hickory smoke fire and could have been cut with a
fork. There were small red skinned potatoes roasted in garlic and
olive oil then garnished with fresh parsley, plus a small side
salad.

“Yes, thank you, especially for the salad!”
I said. “I have a greenhouse back home and manage to have enough
greens for a salad once a week. It’s been awhile though. What was
that dressing?”

“A specialty,” Kora said. “It’s yogurt,
cucumbers, and wasabi. I was hoping you liked it.”

“How do you grow the fresh stuff?” Jim
asked. “I didn’t see a greenhouse.”

“We have a part of the basement sectioned
off for hydroponic growing. Here in the woods, a glass house is too
vulnerable to damage and is too easily covered with heavy snow. The
solar array originally was for all the grow-lights, although we
quickly realized that with enough panels and batteries for storage,
we didn’t have to do without many of the conveniences we were
leaving behind,” Lee answered.

“With a bigger system, Lee was able to put
in an on-demand hot water unit for me. When we first made the
decision to move off-grid, hot water was my biggest obstacle,” Kora
said.

I had a flashback to the time my ex, Sam,
told me we didn’t move to the woods for
me
to have
conveniences. After seven years I still never had running hot
water. These people seemed to have found a way to make it work. I
shook off my sour memory of a former life.

“Once the ash clouded the sun for days on
end, the larger battery bank was a life saver. We might not have
had direct sun, but even ambient light is enough to keep a charge.
We shut down a few systems to keep the hydroponics going and once
the sun came back out, even on a limited basis, we got everything
working again,” Lee said.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Five years now,” Lee said. “We both needed
a complete change after we found out we couldn’t have children. I
sold my software business and we built this. We took on a
ninety-nine year lease with the feds so we wouldn’t have to put up
with neighbors.” We all laughed.

“Any regrets?”

“None,” Kora answered quickly. “Other than
not having children. It is what it is though. What about you,
Allexa? Any kids back home?”

“I have two sons and two grandchildren, a
boy and a girl, and another due this fall.”

“What about you, Jim?” Lee asked.

“No kids and never married. Military life
isn’t kind to relationships. I’ve always moved around too much,”
Jim answered honestly.

April 20

“Are you sure you won’t stay another day?”
Kora pleaded.

“We can’t. Even
though they don’t know we’re coming, we’re overdue meeting up with
Jim’s unit,” I said while we were packing our things into the
Hummer. “I promise, though, that if we get back this direction we
will
stop to see you!”

“I want to warn you about a group of
convicts up the road,” Lee said. “I heard those three talking about
them. Seems that there are quite a few of them holed up at a summer
camp about twenty-five miles from here. I don’t know exactly where,
all I know is they’re a mean bunch, maybe twenty of them, led by
some guy with lots of tattoos. Even those three scumbags were
trying to get away from him. The smart thing to do would be to get
out of the Hiawatha as soon as possible.”

“I’ll take that into consideration, thanks.
How much further is it to I-75?” Jim asked, looking at the
laminated map from Major Kopley.

Lee looked over Jim’s shoulder at the map.
“We’re about here,” he pointed, “and we’re fifty miles from I-75.
From there the roads are still fairly good, even after the quake.
Once you get to that point, Sault Ste. Marie is a half hour
away.”

“I put an ice pack in the cooler for you,”
Kora said with a mischievous grin. “So don’t forget to check it
tonight.”

*

The drive was uneventful with the exception
of a few more small trees across the road, and we made good
time.

“We’ve come forty miles, Allex, I think
we’re safely past the area Lee warned us about,” Jim said, stopping
the Hummer. “Ready for a break?”

“Yes! Sitting for so long has my hip
stiffening up.”

“You should have said something, Allex. We
could have stopped sooner.”

“No, Jim, I’m fine and I’d rather be away
from the danger. I’ve had enough excitement these last couple of
days.” I walked a few feet back the way we came, stretching my
muscles. I stooped down, brushing aside some leaves. “Morels!”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me. I know my mushrooms!” I said
gleefully. “Now this is the kind of excitement I like.” I felt
giddy and started looking around more. I found an overgrown logging
trail on the opposite side of the road that held promise. “We’re
going to eat well tonight!”

“Don’t go any further until I come back. I’m
going to move the Hummer off the road and out of sight first,” Jim
said. He backed the big vehicle into another trail. The saplings he
backed over sprung back up in front of the Hummer as soon as they
cleared the under-carriage as good as a natural camouflage could
ever be.

We wandered a hundred yards up the old road,
filling a cloth bag with this wonderful spring delicacy.

I heard Jim grunt and turned to see him
lying on the ground, a short man standing over him with baseball
bat! Suddenly a large sack was slipped over my head and I was
picked up over someone’s shoulder. I tried to scream, but who would
hear me?

“Don’t waste the bullet on him, Carl. He’s
dead!” someone else said as we started to move.
Jim is
dead??
I felt an emptiness crush my chest at the thought.

I was jostled
around for ten or fifteen minutes, and then dropped on the cold,
hard ground. The bag was pulled off my head and I saw a dozen or so
men staring at me, one of them covered in inky tattoos.
Oh,
shit!

“Oh, looky what we have here,” the tattooed
man said. “A fresh playmate for me!” He grabbed my arm and yanked
me to my feet. “Who is the idiot that left her with a gun?” he
screamed, pulling my Beretta from the holster. “What’s your name
little girl?”

I was silent. I took the moment to observe
this… person. The blue and black tattoos started just above his
shaved eyebrows and traveled across his equally shaved bald head
and down his neck. What skin was visible on his arms was covered in
graphic etchings. This had to be the leader Lee had warned us about
and the camp we thought we were safely past. We had inadvertently
stumbled into a hornet’s nest and it had cost Jim his life.

“I
said
what’s your name?” he
growled.

“Allexa. What’s yours?” I snapped back.

“They call me Tat,” he said proudly, walking
around me. “Strip!”

“No.”

He reached out and slapped me across the
face. It stung and my first reaction was to retaliate. I slapped
him back. The crowd went silent as Tat grinned, and he hit me
again, hard. I landed on the ground, the sharp gravel digging into
my soft hands. I tasted the coppery tang of blood in my mouth and
spat it out. He yanked me to my feet again.

“You’re a feisty one! We’re gonna have some
fun!” He dragged me toward one of the cabins that circled the open
area.

The two room cabin stank of mildew and
unwashed bodies, and something else I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Perhaps it was fear. The one room held a bed, a dresser, and a desk
with a chair, with a small bathroom off to the side.

“Now, strip,” Tat leered at me.

“No.” I repeated. He lunged at me, yanking
my jacket off and tossing it on the floor. I pushed him back.

“Yeah, fight me, bitch.” Since that was what
he wanted, I stopped. I didn’t care what he did with me. With Jim
dead, I didn’t care about anything.

*

April 21

Regardless of the face it wears, rape is
still an ugly thing.

April 22

There was a great deal of muffled commotion
going on outside. Tat put his belt around my neck like a leash. He
did that every time we left the room. The only time I was free of
him was when I had to join the other two captive women in the
cooking cabin. We stepped outside and I came to a halt, my heart
pounding. The relief that filled me made me dizzy and I
staggered.

Colonel James Andrews was standing in the
center of the compound. I don’t know which a better sight: him, or
the three dozen armed soldiers that had all of the escaped convicts
surrounded.

“I said
where is she
?” Jim yelled at
the man kneeling in the dirt. The man tipped his chin in my
direction and Jim spun around. “Allex!” He took several long
strides and stopped in front of us. “Take that off her,” he snarled
at Tat.