At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

  Garrett eyed the walls around them, then threw his gaze up to the ceiling. It couldn’t be more than twenty feet in either direction from the opening, and the ceiling was closer to the ground than his stomach liked. Maybe ten feet up, twelve if they stretched it. But everyone would be able to fit in here, if they got close.

  “It will be a perfect hiding place,” he finally said. “Enough room for everyone, even if they need to lie down for a bit. And the entrance is almost impossible to see if you don’t know it’s here.”

  “God only knows how Shawnee found it,” Greyson agreed, nodding. “Never occurred to me that there might be rock underneath all that sand. Or that anything good might come of the rock itself.”

  Garrett snorted and walked into the center of the opening, then started turning, mentally filling the cave with the people from Trinity Ranch and making sure they’d fit. There were fewer now than there had been, and he cringed at the memory of those they’d lost. Bart and Riley, left behind—potentially dead, potentially held hostage in Helen Falls. Victims of the biker gang that lived there and had started making trouble for the small community of Trinity Ranch over a twice-stolen tanker of gasoline. Fawn, the tiny girl with the big heart, who had died of a sickness they’d never been able to figure out. Only children, dead now thanks to the actions of—

  Don’t, he told himself firmly, breaking the thought before it snowballed. He didn’t have time for that. Didn’t have time for the heartbreak and frustration. The only question he had to think about right now was whether everyone would fit in this cave—and whether they could get here easily if they had to leave town.

  “Think it can fit everyone?” he asked, turning around again and trying to imagine everyone at Trinity Ranch. “Think it’s close enough for the people to get here easily, if it comes down to it?”

  There was a pause, and then: “I think so.” Greyson turned with Garrett, falling into step with him. “Don’t know how much they’d be able to bring with them in terms of supplies, but they’ll be able to make it easily enough if we draw them a map. Just can’t plan to stay. Then again, this isn’t supposed to be a long-term hiding place. Right?”

  “Right,” Garrett said firmly. “Only to be used if they don’t have any other choice. Just a place to hide. Just in case.”

  “And what about the plan?”

  Garrett bit his lip. True, there were plans to leave town. That didn’t mean they would materialize—and it didn’t mean they couldn’t be prepared in case something happened before they were able to go.

  “Figure this is a pretty central location to several of the towns around here,” Garrett ended up saying, choosing not to share the extent of his thoughts. “If we stay close enough, we’ll still be able to use it.”

  Another pause, and Garrett already knew what was coming.

  “Think they’ll be coming after us?”

  Garrett turned to meet the bigger man’s eyes. “You know they will. And I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to defend ourselves. Not against a gang of men who don’t care how many lives they take. We have too many women and children, and few of them are comfortable around a gun. Yes, they’ll come for us, and when they do, we’ll need a place to hide.”

  He cast his eyes back over the cave. It wasn’t ideal; if the bikers from Helen Falls found them here, they’d be worse than cornered. Here, they’d be completely trapped.

  But if the bikers from Helen Falls were distracted by something else at the time, and never saw the townspeople leave town at all, it just might work.

  “What’s the plan?” Alice asked the moment Garrett was back in town.

  Her tone was sharp, and he knew exactly what that meant. She was upset that he’d taken Greyson with him into the wilderness to look at the cave. Angry at having been left behind.

  Frustrated at having lost those two kids back in Helen Falls.

  Instead of answering her immediate question, Garrett addressed the things she wasn’t saying as he strode quickly toward the house he’d adopted as his own. “Alice, you know I couldn’t take you. You’re one of the only people I trust, and I needed you here to keep an eye on things while I was out of town. You’re the only one who can talk sense into these people if they decide they want to try something crazy. If they won’t hear sense, you’re the only one who can physically manhandle them into obeying.”

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering if that would do the trick, and caught the ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth. More than she usually gave anyone. He’d count that as a win.

  “Anything happen while I was gone?” he continued.

  It wasn’t an empty question, and it wasn’t one that he asked lightly. One of the men in town, Steve Thomason, had been making trouble for Garrett, Alice, and their group since they’d arrived. He’d never liked Garrett, and had been both offended and jealous when the rest of the townspeople voted Garrett in as their preferred leader.

  Steve had spent every waking moment since then doing his best to undermine Garrett and take over. And when Garrett, Alice, Shane and Greyson had returned from Helen Falls down a truck and missing the two teenagers they’d taken with them, Steve had made short work of riling the townspeople up about Garrett and his leadership.

  Even though the people had arrived at Garrett’s door that morning, assuring him that he was still their leader in their eyes, Garrett knew that they weren’t as solidly behind him as they had been before. Garrett felt them starting to splinter—and he knew for a fact that Steve would be working to drive a wedge deeper into the divide.

  “Well, you know Steve,” Alice said, lengthening her strides to keep up with Garrett. “That man can’t keep his fool mouth shut. Can’t stop telling people that he’d be a better leader than you. But the moment you ask him what he actually wants to do, he doesn’t have an original idea in his brain. Just a loudmouth, and nothing more.”

  “A loudmouth that the people tend to listen to, if I’m not here to drown him out,” Garrett grumbled.

  Alice bumped his shoulder with her own—a rare show of affection from the stoic woman. “That’s why you have me,” she answered. “To do your shouting for you when you’re out of town. Now what’s going on with the caves? Anything we can use? Are they real?” She cast her gaze to the side, where they could see the rolling flatness of the desert between houses. “I didn’t think there was anything out there but sand and gravel.”

  Garrett turned up the walkway that led to his house—or at least the house where he currently lived—and stopped to face her. Alice’s hair was getting longer now, reaching past her chin and almost to her shoulders, and he thought it made her look… less sharp, somehow. The look in her eyes belied that softness, though, and he quickly rerouted his thoughts.

  Keep thinking about her looking soft, and she’ll desert you faster than you can say “wait,” he told himself firmly.

  “They’re real enough,” he said, answering her question. “Or rather, it’s real enough. Very well hidden, too. Entrance is virtually undetectable, just looks like a hole in the ground in the middle of a bunch of cacti.”

  Alice breathed out through pursed lips. “And there’s enough room for everyone?”

  Garrett shrugged. “Enough room for the people. Not the supplies. And not for any length of time. Definitely not if they’re being actively chased. Those bikers see our people go down into that hole and the whole community is going to be trapped down there. The opposite of safe. But if they—if we—need a place to hide for a few hours…” He shrugged. “It works.”

  Alice’s eyes narrowed. “They?” she asked, latching onto the point he’d hoped she wouldn’t notice.

  Another shrug. “It would be pretty foolish to think that if something happens, we’ll all get out of here at the same time,” he answered simply. “If something does happen, I know I won’t be one of the ones running first. Will you?”

  She gave him another sly cat grin, and nodded once. “You’re willing to do that? Even f
or people who don’t completely trust you anymore?”

  He turned sharply on his toes and started walking toward his house again. “I can’t blame them for that. Not really. We might have thought we were doing the right thing in Helen Falls, but that doesn’t change the fact that we came back without one of the trucks, and may well have gotten Riley and Bart killed. We put the entire community at risk.”

  “Which is why we also immediately started in with a plan to leave,” Alice said, rushing to catch up with him. “A plan that Steve has been trying to undermine since we voted on it.”

  “Steve is convinced that there’s nothing to fear,” Garrett growled.

  He reached the porch and flung the front door open, the very thought of Steve making him feel caged in and restless. “And unfortunately he’s right about us not knowing for sure where we’re going. That doesn’t mean we can stay here and just… wait. Like rabbits sinking back into the shadows, hoping the coyote can’t see us or might decide we’re not worth the time. We have something those bikers want. We pissed them off by taking it, and then we pissed them off even more by keeping it. Even worse, we managed to injure their leader and kill some of their men. And damage their bikes.”

  He gave her a pointed look at that, to which she raised her eyebrows in a “Who me? I was just saving your life” sort of way.

  And he really did have to give her that one, because she had. That didn’t change his point, though.

  “We have to get out of town. Even if it means just going to another town and starting over. Every town around this one is picked over, so we can’t bring in any more supplies, and we’re sitting ducks when it comes to the Helen Falls gang. We have more than enough weapons to protect ourselves, but we don’t have enough men to fire the weapons we have. I still don’t think we have a choice in the matter. Did you make any progress on the plan while I was gone?”

  Alice made a beeline for the kitchen and started rifling through the drawers for the protein bars she knew Garrett sometimes kept. When she found one, she yanked it out of the drawer and took a bite.

  “Sure did,” she said around a mouthful of chocolate protein. “Kristy, old Bubba, and the kids go in the truck. Those are the ones who are either too sick, too weak, or too pregnant to manage on the bikes. Everyone else gets a bike or their own two feet. All the supplies go into the truck, obviously, and we fit in as many of the younger kids as we can. There aren’t that many of them, so we figure there will be space.”

  She took another bite and chewed before continuing. “Bubba has volunteered to drive the truck, and assuming he can manage to keep his eyes on the road, and Kristy doesn’t go into premature labor or anything like that, we’ll be on our way to a new town this evening.”

  This evening. Garrett almost sighed in relief, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to count these particular chickens until they were well and truly hatched—in another town, and preferably one far, far away. He’d gone out and scouted the cave because he wasn’t sure they’d be able to get out of town without a fight from Steve. Or before the bikers showed up and made trouble. And he wasn’t going to let his guard down on that account quite yet.

  “Tonight is good,” he noted, rooting around in the cupboard for another protein bar. “But we’ll want to leave early enough that we don’t run the risk of being caught out in the cold. One truck isn’t going to hold all of us if the temperature drops. And I don’t exactly want to go traipsing into a new town in the middle of the night, expecting a warm welcome.”

  Alice gave him a sharp nod. “We’re aiming to leave at four p.m. The sun will be on its way down so we won’t have midday heat anymore, and we can make the walk to the nearest town before it even gets dark. Besides, Bubba, Kristy, and the kids may be able to go ahead of us and prepare any people. It’s not going to be as dramatic as you’re thinking.”

  Garrett found the bar he’d been looking for and took a big bite, barely stopping himself from groaning in delight at the promise of calories. But then he frowned.

  “If the bikers have anyone watching the town, they’ll see us parading out of it and go right to Kraken.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d thought it. It wouldn’t be the first time he and Alice had grappled with this particular problem. It was November now, and the nighttime temperatures were enough to cause extreme discomfort for anyone caught out in the desert without some form of shelter. The days were no better; even this late in the fall, it was hot on the sand during the day. They’d thought the afternoon would be the safest time to travel, but the light brought an additional danger: visibility.

  They knew the bikers from Helen Falls were watching them. Even with their bikes disabled, they would have been able to walk to Trinity Ranch.

  “But they don’t have their bikes,” Alice reminded him. “It will take ages for any scouts to get back to Helen Falls—and even longer for them to come after us. No matter how angry they are. We’ve been through this, Garrett. They might see us. It doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do anything about it.”

  He nodded, processing the information again. It was always the same answer. Disabling the bikes had been the one good thing they’d managed to do on their trip to Helen Falls. And without transportation, the bikers were less of a danger.

  “If we can get out of here and be far enough away before they get to town…” she started.

  “They’ll never see where we’ve gone,” he finished. He took another bite of the protein bar and scowled. “It makes sense. That doesn’t mean I like it. Too many places for things to go wrong. Too many places to lose people. More people.” Looking up, he gave her a grin. “Guess that just means we’ll have to be even craftier than those bikers, if it comes down to it.”

  Craftier than the bikers. He wasn’t sure it was possible. He also knew they didn’t have a choice.

  Chapter 2

  Garrett dropped the crate he’d been carrying next to the truck, grunting as the weight left his shoulders. He’d never been a big man—never a football player or an athlete. But he’d been strong enough. Did a lot of time interning as an assistant for architects before he got his own degree, and so had spent his fair share of time carrying box after box of files, folders, and digging materials. Had helped out on building sites a time or two as well.

  None of that had prepared him for how hard he’d had to work since the EMP detonations. Those blasts had changed everything. Suddenly all electricity was gone, all the things that depended on electric connections dead and standing dormant. Water, power, vehicles… It had all disappeared, plunging them into a modern-day dark age. Literally. And though he’d been living by his wits ever since then, a large part of him had immediately started wishing he’d been one of those big, strong guys who could lift a hundred pounds like it was nothing.

  Still, he couldn’t complain about having been the one to see the bigger picture. Not really. It had gotten him and Alice and some of the others out of the prison General Green had been holding them in, at least. Gotten him voted leader of this little community, though how much good it had done the people so far was up for debate.

  He glanced around the garage where they’d taken to storing their vehicles and watched quietly as the people scurried around the one truck like worker ants. The crate he’d brought had been one of the last, and the people here were busy shoving supplies into the back of the truck, then taking them out and rearranging them, shuffling them into a different order, and trying again.

  One truck was barely enough to take everything they’d gathered. But it was all they had, at this point, after the other working truck had fallen prey to their mission at Helen Falls the day before. He, Greyson, Shane and Alice hadn’t had the chance to look for another vehicle when they’d hightailed it out of there. They’d been in such a rush to get out of town that they hadn’t even managed to do that responsibly, either.

  Before they’d come to find Garrett, the others had lost Bart and Riley. Unintentionally, of course, and he still thought the tw
o teenagers had played a part in it, ducking down an alley instead of following Alice and the others like they were supposed to. That didn’t make it any easier to stomach. It didn’t make it feel any less like his fault. If he’d been with them, he would have been paying more attention. Would have made sure they were all clear on the plan.

  The thought that those kids might still be there in Helen Falls—alive and waiting for Garrett to come save them—hadn’t stopped eating at him since he’d returned, either. And the worst of it was that he knew he couldn’t do a damn thing. Even if they were still alive, he couldn’t set foot in that town again.

  Not if he hoped to get out with his own life intact.

  Going in there and getting himself killed… Well, it certainly wouldn’t help Riley and Bart, if they were still there. And it would derail everything he was fighting for when it came to taking care of the people right in front of him. No, he had to hope that those two kids were still alive, and were smart enough to find a way out of town. Maybe even get back to Trinity Ranch—or some other nearby community. He’d taught Bart an awful lot since he, Alice, and the rest of the gang had found their way into this community. Now he had to trust Bart to use what he’d learned to keep himself and Riley safe.

  “You look like you’ve been chewing on glass,” Julia said, appearing at his elbow.

  He cast her a faint grin. “Just thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made,” he replied. “Wondering if Bart and Riley are still in Helen Falls, waiting for me to come rescue them. Telling myself one more time that it doesn’t matter if they are or not. Because I can’t go back there. Not right now.”

  The girl nodded wisely. “You’re right. On all accounts. Mistakes were made, people were lost. And it sucks. All of it.”

  Garrett cringed. “You’ve been hanging around Alice too much. Starting to sound like her,” he noted, turning back to the scene in front of him.

  It looked like Greyson and Manny had stepped in and brought some organization to the effort, because everyone was moving in a more intentional way, now. Less pulling supplies out of the truck, more shoving them in. And lots of Greyson motioning around and Manny barking out orders.