Stephanie Bond - Baby, Drive South

He cursed under his breath as he unclipped a pair of binoculars from his belt. If he couldn’t remember when he’d last had a woman’s legs wrapped around him, it had been way too long.

Porter adjusted the lenses to bring the distant landscape into focus, zeroing in on the brand-spanking-new road. Due to cost and labor, the brothers had decided to wait to add yellow striping until enough cars arrived to warrant two-way traffic control. For now, the most frequent travelers of the road—rabbits, skunks, opossums and armadillos—didn’t seem to mind the omission.

Porter skimmed the view for any signs of human life. In the old days, the water tower had been a lookout for lightning fires and other natural disasters. The metal box on the side of the tank held tornado sirens. By a bizarre twist of fate, the tower from which the mammoth tornado had been spotted to allow an alarm to be sounded had been the only structure spared in the ensuing destruction. Tornadoes at this altitude were rare, and this one had been monstrous. Every resident had survived, but every man-made thing in the storm’s path had been leveled. To the tiny town already dying a slow economic death, it had been the fatal blow.

His brothers hadn’t been in town when it happened, but Porter had been home on leave from the Army and vividly remembered climbing out of a root cellar after the twister had passed. Ground-level pictures and television footage couldn’t quite capture the utter obliteration of homes, schools, businesses, churches. Only aerial photographs of the flattened debris showed the enormity of the loss. Those gut-wrenching pictures were branded on Porter’s brain—their own homestead and all its contents had simply vanished from its concrete footer. Hauntingly, the black metal mailbox left standing at the end of the driveway was the only proof the Armstrongs had ever lived on that spot.

His mother had cried for weeks over her missing wedding ring. Even after their father had passed away, she’d worn the gold filigree band every day, but had taken it off moments before the storm hit to do chores. Porter had scoured their property with a metal detector for days before relenting that the ring, like all their other worldly possessions and those of their neighbors, had been lost to the four winds.

When the Armstrong brothers had returned to Sweetness a few months ago, the decaying main road had been overtaken by weeds and fallen trees. Animals had taken up residence in the piles of splintered wood and crumbled brick where houses and businesses had once stood. Porter had taken one look at the remnants of the town, choked with thick kudzu vines, and had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task before them. If either of his two brothers had balked at that moment, he would’ve gone with them. Kendall had taken in the wasteland before them in heavy silence; but characteristically, Marcus had simply jammed his hands on his hips and said, “Let’s get to work, boys.”

What lay ahead had been countless hours of back-breaking work for them and the men they’d recruited, most of whom had served with Marcus in the Marines, with Kendall in the Air Force, and with him in the Army. In the beginning, they had all been too tired by the end of the day to think about the fact that their beds were empty. But now…

Porter spotted movement in the distance and jerked the binoculars back to focus. At the sight of heat rising from the dark asphalt in an undulating haze, his heart jumped to his throat—a vehicle was approaching…a large vehicle. Porter squinted, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. When realization struck, he almost dropped the binoculars.

It wasn’t a large vehicle…it was several vehicles approaching. No—

Dozens.

A bumper-to-bumper caravan was headed straight for Sweetness! And from the looks of the arms and heads and long hair lolling out of convertibles and rolled-down windows, the cars were jam-packed with women. Hot, eager, willing women!

Porter slapped his thigh and whooped with joy. He waved his arms, knowing the chances of anyone noticing him at this distance were slim at best. But the ad had worked—he couldn’t wait to tell Marcus! He rushed toward the ladder, returning the binoculars to his belt while fumbling for his cell phone. With one hand he began to scramble down the tall, narrow ladder, using the other hand to speed-dial his brother, half-wishing he could be there in person to see the look on Marcus’s face.

Porter suddenly realized he’d forgotten his shirt and in his hesitation, his foot slipped off a rung. The weight of his body broke his one-handed grip. His gut clenched in realization of just how far a fall off the tower ladder would be. He flailed in midair for a few seconds before conceding defeat and tucking into a roll to help absorb the certain and nasty impact.

As he plummeted through the air, Porter released a strangled curse. Just his rotten luck that carloads of women were finally here…and he’d be lying at the bottom of the water tower with a broken neck.

The flat-back landing jarred every bone in Porter’s body and drove the air out of his lungs. He lay there for a few seconds and waited for the initial pain to subside before daring to breathe. When he had no choice but to drag air into his body, he registered gratefully that his lungs hadn’t been punctured. He only hoped the rest of his internal organs had fared so well. The sweet tang of wild grass and the musty scent of soil filled his nostrils. His ears buzzed with more than the noise of the insects in the weeds around him.

He opened his eyes gingerly and saw the water tower looming over him at a seemingly impossible height. The fact that he was alive was a small miracle.

“Porter? Porter?”

At the sound of his name, he blinked, then realized the distant voice was coming from his cell phone lying near his head.

Marcus.

Porter twisted to reach the phone, but when pain lit up his lower left leg, he shouted in agony.

“Porter?”

He made another attempt, gritting his teeth against his body’s rebellion, and finally closed his fingers around the phone. He brought it to his ear. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“What happened?”

Porter winced again, contrite. “I was on the water tower.”

“And?”

“And…I have good news and bad news.”

Marcus’s sigh crackled like static over the phone. “Give me the good news.”

“There’s a caravan of women headed into town.”

“If that’s the good news,” Marcus said sourly, “I don’t think I want to hear the bad news.”

“The bad news is I fell off the water tower and I think I broke my leg.”

Porter held the phone away from his ear to spare himself the litany of curses his brother unleashed. When Marcus quieted, Porter put the phone back to his mouth. “Are you going to come get me, or do I have to crawl back to town?”

“Are you bleeding?”

Porter lifted his head and scanned his dust-covered body. “I don’t think so.”

“For all the good you’ll do me now, I might as well let you lie there,” Marcus growled, then let loose another string of expletives. “I’ll get Kendall. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Then he disconnected the call.

Porter laid his head back in the deep grass. Marcus was right—they were already short-handed. If his leg was broken, he’d be laid up for at least a few weeks, a liability to his brothers.

And damn, women were coming! Just when there was a good reason to be up and moving around, he’d be relegated to bed…and not for fun.

He pushed himself to a sitting position and eased up the leg of his work-worn jeans. He was relieved not to see bones protruding, but the persistent, shooting pain from his ankle confirmed the injury was more than a bruise. Gritting his teeth against the ache, he inched himself backward to lean against a sapling and swat at gnats until he heard the rumble of two four-wheelers heading toward him.