The First Hours Read online

  “Then, we’ll just have to beg a ride from someone or,” she leaned in close and hissed, “We’ll borrow someone else’s phone dummy.”

  Teagan felt her blood pressure rise, and for the first time, she understood exactly what her father had been talking about when he’d used the term on her. Her blood pressure was surely rising. She gritted her teeth until a sharp bolt of pain reminded her about her tooth.

  Teagan exhaled sharply through tight lips, “Didn’t you hear what I said?’

  She threw her hands up and stomped off down the road. Wild creatures in the woods or not, she wasn’t going to stand there and let Deena call her names. For one thing, Teagan knew she wasn’t a dummy by any means, and she also knew just how smart Deena was scholastically. Deena had almost missed graduating, and if not for her parents buying her a second chance at the finals, Deena would have repeated the final year. “Nope, it isn’t me who’s the dummy,” Teagan whispered.

  The tap of running feet behind her told Teagan that the darkness had hastened Deena along. She would have laughed at the frantic pace Deena set for herself to catch up, but Teagan showed no mercy by not slowing down. If Deena were going with her, she would do so at the pace Teagan set. Teagan was tired of playing the role of Deena’s babysitter.

  “Teagan, slow down, please. I’m sorry.”

  Teagan stopped. This was a milestone for Deena. She had apologized, and for that, Teagan would wait for her. As she walked, she’d felt the woods closing in on her and it was all she had been able to do to maintain a walk when her mind had been telling her to run. Deena wouldn’t be any protection, but it reminded her of something she’d read long ago. If you’re going to be hiking in bear country, make sure to hike with a person who walked slower than you.

  She almost laughed out loud but restrained herself in case Deena wanted to know why she was laughing. Teagan was sure that she could outrun Deena any day of the week.

  “I don’t know why you’ve got yourself in such a huffy mood,” Deena panted out. She rested her hands on her knees while she caught her breath. “I didn’t mean that you were a real dummy. It’s just an expression, but we could use someone’s phone when we get there.”

  “They don’t work. If I’m right, no phones work, and no cars run, and lights don’t turn on. There is no more television or radio or anything. The only way we’re going to get home is if we walk.”

  Teena raised her head, “You’re crazy…sorry, I didn’t mean it like, you know cuck-coo, crazy. I meant it like…”

  “Never mind. I know how you meant it, but just wait. You’ll see exactly what I mean when we get there.” She pointed down the road, “That should be the gas station up ahead, and the lights aren’t on.”

  Deena cocked her head to the side and listened, “But I hear voices. Sounds like someone’s having a party.”

  Teagan listened and heard sounds of merrymaking like Deena said. Someone was whooping it up close to the service station or maybe up on the freeway. It was hard to tell, but Teagan could see a glow of dancing light about where the freeway should be. The stench of burning rubber assaulted her nostrils, and Teagan wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  “What is that smell?” Deena asked, her voice expressing the revulsion Teagan was feeling.

  “Pop…pop, pop, pop.”

  Teagan whipped her head around, trying to hear the direction of the sounds. She grabbed Deena’s arm and pulled her to the side of the road.

  Deena jerked her arm away, “Stop that. What are you doing? It’s not even the fourth of July, but someone has firecrackers. How fun!”

  “Those aren’t fireworks. What we’re hearing are gunshots. Someone is shooting.”

  “What? Why?” Deena said her voice filled with disbelief.

  Chapter Three

  Teagan found them a place to sit where they could observe the gas station without being seen. She wanted to know what they were getting themselves into before they approached. Situational awareness, just like Uncle Eric had taught her.

  “You still haven’t said why someone would be shooting up there. Maybe it’s the cops.” When Teagan seemed to be ignoring her, Deena nudged Teagan with her elbow, “Teagan, talk to me.”

  “Will you shut up for just a minute and let me think?” She didn’t know if Deena was deliberately obtuse or if she really didn’t have a clue what was going on, but Teagan wasn’t going to rush into a setting where she had no control.

  The one thing her father and Uncle Eric had taught her was situational awareness. She had never thought either one was a preparedness nut or gun freak, but they both said a smart man was always prepared for anything. Her father believed in not running to the grocery store every time they needed something but stocked up whenever there was a good sale on something they frequently used. As far as him not being a gun freak, his job as a county sheriff’s deputy kept him close to the gun community. The same could be said for Uncle Eric being in the military. Teagan wasn’t overly proficient with firearms, but she knew which end was up and could hit a target as long as it wasn’t moving.

  “I’m cold,” Deena whispered. “Aren’t you? I wish I’d taken the sweatshirt instead of this stupid jacket. Are you sure you don’t want to trade me?”

  “Will you be quiet?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be so mean, maybe I’ll just leave you here by yourself. It sounds like someone is having a party up there, and it will be warm by the fire.” She waited for a few seconds, “Maybe the whole weekend won’t be a waste.”

  “Deena, you do whatever it is you want, I’m not going to stop you, but you need to think about what you may be getting in to. You have no idea who’s up there, and I bet they won’t have your best interests at heart.”

  “Huh! Like you do? All you’ve been doing is giving me orders since we left the car. You took the warmest coat and the best pair of shoes. That proves you don’t have my best interests at heart either.”

  “I have my best interests at heart so, if you’re with me, that would include you too. If you go off on your own to join whoever is up on the freeway, then you’re on your own. As soon as I figure this out, I’m leaving, and you’re either here or not. It makes no difference to me.”

  Deena pushed herself off the ground, dusted her behind and turned to walk away. As if she had a second thought, she stopped and faced Teagan, “You know what Teagan? People would like you a lot more if you didn’t walk around acting so stuck up. You’re always walking around with your nose in the air as if you’re better than everyone else. Well, I’ve got news for you. Just because you’re smarter when it comes to school, you have no people skills at all.” Deena turned and stomped off.

  Open-mouthed, Teagan watched her go. Deena’s words stung and came as such a surprise, Teagan didn’t have enough time to form an appropriate response. Teagan didn’t know simple words could hurt so much. She didn’t think she was any better than anyone else and Deena was wrong. She had to be. People always acted as if they liked her. It was true that she wasn’t overly burdened by offers to go places or do things, but she had always written it off as no one wanted to hang out with the sheriff’s daughter. Surely Nancy would have told her if the kids didn’t like her. Teagan frowned, now that it had been thrown in front of her face, she realized that even her long-time best friend had been avoiding her. Nancy hadn’t said why she couldn’t go on the shore trip, just that she couldn’t, but Nancy’s parents had been going through some stuff that Nancy hadn’t wanted to talk about.

  Teagan realized that in the grand scheme of things, whether she was liked or not, no longer mattered. If her thoughts on the lack of phones, power, or running vehicles were correct, there would be a lot of things that no longer mattered, and she wasn’t going to waste time worrying about another person’s opinion.

  The most important task she had right then was to observe the gas station until she knew it was safe to approach. With the moon hidden by the low hanging clouds that had moved in, Teagan felt it was safe to move in clo
ser and did so, hiding behind the fence that surrounded the trash bin. She knew that’s what the fence concealed, by the stench of half-rotted garbage. She wrinkled her nose and breathed through her mouth. Once Teagan sat on the ground with her back to the board fence, she realized how sore her feet were and just how tired she was. They had begun walking just before noon, and she was sure it had to be after nine or maybe as late as ten because she was sure they’d walked a couple hours after full dark.

  There was nothing she could do until it was light enough to see, so Teagan pulled the hood over her head and settled in to wait. She wrapped her arms in front of herself and let her chin drop to her chest. Her Dad had told her to conserve warmth, make yourself as small as possible. Teagan would have liked his advice to hold more truth, but as small as she was able to make her physical self, her inner self still felt the chill.

  She pulled the neck opening over her chin, to rest under her nose and breathed through her mouth, not only to keep from smelling the stink of a full garbage container, but the warmth of her breath was a welcome relief from the cold no matter how short-lived it was going to be.

  Teagan woke with a start. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she wasn’t sure if she’d been dreaming or if she’d heard the screams for real. She held her breath and strained to hear anything out of the ordinary. She rolled on to her knees and listened again.

  It came as a surprise that she didn’t hear anything, not even the night sounds she would have expected. With her move, her hip screamed in protest, and she realized she been sitting on the gun they’d found in the car the whole time she’d slept. Teagan pulled it from her pocket and slid it into the pouch on the front of the hoodie and sank back down, prepared to get as comfortable as possible. She pulled her heels up as close to her butt as she could get them and rested her arms and then her head. She must have slept longer than a few minutes because she couldn’t force herself to relax enough to drop back to sleep. She didn’t usually remember her dreams on waking, but the scream haunted her. It had sounded so agonizing.

  As the cold seeped in, Teagan began to wish they had never left the comfort of the car. Both she and Deena could have been fairly comfortable with the seats laid back, and their combined body warmth would have been better than sitting exposed to the elements behind a dumpster. She thought about the cloud cover and knew she should be grateful it was there. Oregon was famous for unpredictable weather, and freezing temperatures in April were not unheard of.

  “Neither is snow,” Teagan reminded herself. She questioned why she hadn’t found an unlocked car and climbed in or at least contacted the people in the store. Maybe Deena had the right idea by joining whoever had started the fire.

  From her position, she couldn’t see if the fire still burned or hear any of the voices that had drawn Deena toward them. They should have stayed together. Why hadn’t they? Teagan didn’t have to think about the question at all. She couldn’t bring herself to trust a situation she had no control over, and Deena hadn’t seemed to care. She had marched off without a thought to their well-being or safety. She hadn’t cared that Teagan wasn’t going with her or hadn’t bothered to ask what Teagan planned to do.

  Teagan woke the next time because she was cold. The bone-chilling cold that saturated her bones. The eastern sky was just beginning to show a yellow glow, but Teagan could see well enough to discern that there were no moving bodies on the freeway. She saw the line of stopped cars, but surprisingly, there wasn’t as much traffic as she would have thought, given that it was Friday when everything came to a halt. Maybe the time of day had something to do with it. The morning commute would have been finished and too early for the afternoon drive home. There were a couple of semi-trucks, and at least one was a food service truck, its refrigeration unit silent. If Teagan was right, its contents would be in high demand if anyone had clued into the events from the day before. Providing the contents didn’t spoil before someone thought about checking it.

  With the need to pee, Teagan walked into the brush behind the service station until she was hidden from view. From her pocket she pulled a used tissue, but used was far better than none. With her personal business taken care of, Teagan walked to the front of the gas station. Between the posters for beer and cigarettes, Teagan peered in. With it only being barely sunrise and the lack of light inside, Teagan couldn’t see anything. She walked to the front door.

  Her common sense told her the door would be locked, but her hand reached out and pulled on the handle anyway. To her surprise, it opened to reveal an older man standing behind the counter armed with a baseball bat, the end laying against his shoulder. He was prepared to use it.

  “I told you guys not to come back here, and I meant it. Now get on out of here.”

  Teagan lifted both hands up in defense, “Whoa…wait a minute. I just want to ask to borrow your phone to call my Dad.”

  His arms twitched as if he were going to swing. Teagan stepped back bumping into the now-closed door behind her. Teagan wasn’t sure how to convey the honesty in her request. Apparently, the man had been dealing with something she knew nothing about, but an active imagination could figure it out.

  She dropped her hands, “Okay. Go ahead and hit me then. You’ll probably be saving me some pain and grief by taking me out now. It’s a long way home if I have to walk all the way and ending it here and now may be a godsend.”

  The man frowned, but the bat end settled back to his shoulder, “Are you crazy? I’m not going to kill you. I’m gonna break something so you can’t leave until this mess is cleared up and the police come.”

  Teagan pursed her lips as if giving his revelation some thought, “Okay. That works for me. Then you have to feed me and look after me until then. I think when my Dad, Deputy Sheriff Tom Cooper of Linn county gets here, he’ll probably want to know all of the details of how you treated his daughter and then didn’t give her good or proper care after you beat her.”

  He blinked and reminded Teagan of an owl. His glasses magnified his brown eyes, making them the most remarkable feature on his face. He obviously hadn’t shaved and looked tired. She wondered if he had been at the store the whole night.

  Looking around, Teagan noticed the coolers were empty as well as some racks she thought had contained potato chips or snacks. Her stomach growled with the thought. “Is this your store? How come the door wasn’t locked? Anyone could just walk in here. Were you open all night?”

  The man’s eyes blinked as if she’d overwhelmed his brain with all her questions, but he took the bat from his shoulder and laid it across the counter, the big end toward Teagan. “For your information, I can’t lock it because I don’t have the key and I can’t leave until the day shift worker gets here. The phone doesn’t work, and neither does mine so I can’t do anything until the boss, or someone else shows up.”

  His explanation may have made sense to him, but it completely boggled Teagan’s mind. He was an adult. He should have been smarter than Teagan, but he didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on. No one was going to come to relieve him, and she thought that before long, someone would remember the gas station and come take all the rest of the food. While the racks were mostly empty, the shelves still held the bakery products, some cans, and packaged foods. She wished she still had her backpack, but it was back in Deena’s car.

  “Can I buy stuff?”

  “If you have the cash to pay for it you can. With no electricity, the credit card machine doesn’t work.”

  Teagan patted her pocket and realized not only did she have the money Deena had thrust at her, but she also had over six hundred dollars of her own, and she wondered how long it would be before her money was worthless.

  “I have cash,” she said and walked to an aisle that seemed to cater to souvenirs. She found several children’s backpacks that sported the slogan, “Explore Oregon, and Discover the wonders of Oregon.” She pulled two off the shelf.

  “Those aren’t cheap, you know. I hope you can pay for them.”
r />   Teagan ignored him and began to pack the items she would find useful on the trip home. The biggest of the two bags, she filled with Gatorade and bottles of water. She fitted in four of each and two small jars of peanut butter. As much as she didn’t like strawberry jam, she included the only jar on the shelf. It was heavy, and she would carry this one on her back for as long as the cheaply made bag held up. She laid the bulging pack on the counter for the man to unpack and total.

  The second bag she walked down the sundries aisle, which shared items such as briquets and starter fluid. She started to walk past until she thought about a fire. She slipped one of the bottles of starter into the bag. Next from her mental list were personal sized packages of Aleve, Tylenol and a small purse-sized sewing kit, complete with short lengths of thread and four needles. She added a second one. Right next to where she’d found the backpacks, there were plastic drink glasses with lids and plastic straws protruding from the tops with the same Oregon logo on them, and she slipped one in. She still had room in the second bag and looked around. Near the end of the short aisle, hung various pieces of fishing gear. There were small plastic bags with hooks complete with leaders and tiny bags of weights. A couple of spools of line topped off her fishing gear. Teagan had no idea if she would need them but decided she would be prepared if she had to catch her own food and she could find a creek to use the stuff. On the shelf below the pegboard where the fishing gear hung, Teagan spotted a set of tools for cleaning your catch. The list on the package said; cutting board, ruler, scales, and knife. She slid the plastic box in behind the other things. Her bag was almost full, but she still needed so much more and headed for the candy aisle.

  There, she grabbed anything that had peanuts in it. Even candied peanuts held some nutritional value, and Teagan was sure with the miles she had to travel, she would need every calorie she could get. She knew it was true, she’d stocked up on empty calories, but the sugar could give her the energy she needed to make the final miles to home.