Tears flowed and ruined what was left of Sam’s makeup. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I’m scared. Where are the police, and why are these thugs not in jail? Two were still wearing their prison clothes.”
Tom heard the last part of the conversation. “I’m sorry I scared you, but those men would have taken their pick of the women and killed the rest of us. I knew we had to attack them now, or everything was lost.”
Sam saw the bandage on Tom’s upper arm. “How did you get wounded?”
“I had to kill one of them just to get back to you. He was the man who killed Jim, and he almost had me twice. He had a big knife and planned to use it on me. I killed him first, but not without a fight. Granny B, the training saved my ass several times today.”
Lucy walked up to Tom and hugged him. “Thanks for saving me from them. I’m glad you killed them. They would have kept hurting people.”
Tom squeezed her shoulder. “Granny B shot twice and helped kill the bad guys. She was a big part of my plan.”
Granny B’s eyes grew, and her head turned to her grandson. “I only shot once.”
Tom was surprised. “Huh? Where did the …?”
Sam reached into her pocket and pulled out a small-concealed carry pistol. “The second shot was from my little .380 automatic I keep for protection.”
Granny B took her grandson and daughter off to the side to see how they were holding up. “I just wanted to see how you two are doing. You don’t have to put your brave face on for me.”
Tom shrugged and looked at his feet. “I’m okay. We did what we had to and need to forget those jerks.”
Jackie was better at expressing her feelings. “Granny B, I was scared shitless. I still shake some when I think about being taken by those men. Tom, you’re my twin brother, and I know you were scared.”
Tom looked up but wouldn’t make eye contact with either of the women who meant the world to him. He shuffled his feet. “I was afraid for you two. When it dawned on me what they planned, I knew what I had to do and just did it. I didn’t think about myself then. I just wanted to kill anyone going to hurt you two. I think it’s just setting in that I could have been hurt or killed, but any sacrifice was worth it to save my only real family.”
Granny B hated having to kill anyone. “There are going to be many more encounters with evil men and women in our future unless we find a way to avoid them. Perhaps your grandpa was right about hiding.”
Tom kept his composure and put on his brave face. “I detest killing anyone, but those men would have killed and raped until someone killed them. I’d rather avoid them if possible and live in peace. Maybe we can drop these people off on Highway 5 south of Ashland and head up into the hills to our place. Grampa made sure we didn’t have any friends in Ashland, so almost no one knows about the ranch or us.”
Granny looked around at the mismatched crew in front of her and just shook her head. “Let’s eat. I’ve got a boiled potherb salad with pokeweed and chickweed. I have some hackberry dressing, hackberries, and some bags of chips and crackers from the plane. Eat up! There’s plenty of pokeweed and hackberries.”
Sam took one look at the weeds and said, “Pokeweed is poisonous. I’d rather eat poop than that stuff.” She left the others and sulked by herself as she watched her daughter eat the weeds and berries.
Granny B looked at the others. “Boiled pokeweed is perfectly safe, and the hackberry sauce will make the taste more to you tenderfoot’s liking.”
An hour later, Granny saw something on the side of the road and called for Sam to join her. “Come here, Sam. I found something that should fit your taste buds a bit better.”
Sam stopped beside Granny B. “What did you find? I’m hungry.”
Granny B pointed at the object covered in flies on the asphalt.
“That’s dog poo.”
“I thought you said you’d rather eat crap than the weeds and berries. Eat up.”
The rage in Sam’s eyes boiled over in her reddened face. She saw the others stifling their laughter. “I prefer human food. Sorry about the comparison of the weeds and berries to poop.”
Jackie snorted, “It’s a crappy world around us. Now is the time to be less picky.”
Tom joined the conversation with a wicked grin. “I’ve studied all kinds of scat, poo, poop, and horse turds in my life on the ranch, but I never was so hungry they looked edible.”
Sam pinched him on the side. “Asshole.”
The Tyvek sheets came in handy that night after the sun went down. The material held in a person’s own body heat and kept them warm all night. Lucy asked why they couldn’t have a fire, and Granny B patiently explained they didn’t want the light or smoke to draw attention to them. Tom had given guard duty assignments to everyone except Lucy. Jackie and Tom had found some string in one of the houses and made some tripwires connected to tin cans and buckets for a simple alarm system.
Tom took the two hours from midnight until two o’clock and wandered around the area in the dark. He saw a few dogs but no people. The silence was disturbed several times by
