At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

  They didn’t have anything large—no bazookas or anything like that—but they had picked up what he estimated to be thirty different weapons, of one sort or another, during their scavenging missions. Handguns, rifles, ARs, and even—surprisingly—two modern bows, completely with quivers full of arrows.

  Of course the bows weren’t the easiest things to use, and though as a community they’d spent hours and hours practicing, Greyson was still the only one who had a prayer of hitting anything with them. That didn’t mean they were going to be left behind. Garrett didn’t want any weapons in a place where the bikers might be able to get a hold of them. Greyson would take one of the bows and both quivers of arrows.

  And Garrett was counting on him to do as much damage as possible with them.

  There were also a good number of flash grenades left over, and several sticks of dynamite.

  “The dynamite will go to both ends of Main Street,” Garrett instructed the group of people in front of him. “I want the biggest explosions to happen at the largest openings into town. Don’t light them yet, obviously, but grab as much furniture as you can from the houses and pile it up in the middle of the road, then attach several sticks of dynamite to it. I want the largest possible explosion with the smallest possible effort.”

  “And between the houses?” Manny asked.

  “More furniture,” Garrett said quickly. “Pile it up in any open space. We don’t need it in the houses, do we?”

  He paused to give the crowd a chance to reply and was rewarded with a chorus of “No!”

  With a nod, he continued. “Then use everything you need to block the space between the houses. It might not keep the bikers from getting in, but it’ll sure give them something to think about, am I right? Give them something to slow them down?”

  Another round of cheers, and Garrett almost smiled. These were the people he was fighting for. This was why he was willing to risk his own life to make sure that this town stayed safe.

  He reached out and grabbed Manny’s arm before the man could leave to start gathering furniture.

  “And Manny,” he added. “You’re a man of many talents. I’m sure you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve from your time in the military, right?” A quick nod from Manny was all he needed to encourage him to continue. “Terrific. Use them. I don’t think we need to do more than slow the bikers down, but if you could find a way to include a trap or two…”

  Manny gave him another quick nod, and Garrett appreciated once again the man’s ability to communicate so much with so few words.

  “Something simple,” he agreed. “Something they won’t be looking for. Like covered pits, perhaps?”

  Garrett grinned. “That sounds like just the ticket. Let me know what you need to get it done.”

  He watched as Manny, Ben, and several of the other men ran off to start gathering furniture and setting traps, and then turned to the people left before him.

  “The rest of you, let’s start gathering the old vehicles we have sitting around here. They’re no good for anything, but they’ll provide valuable blockades if we place them on the smaller roads into town. Use whatever you can find to block them off, and don’t block them only where they hit the edge of town. Give me blockades throughout town, too—anything that will slow those bikers down if they get in.”

  “What about the weapons?” Elisa asked.

  Garrett paused at that, thinking. Did he want them spread out, so people could get to them easily? Or did he want them assigned to each person, so that they had them in hand if anything happened?

  Alice, who was almost always in step with him, answered before he could say anything.

  “Those will be assigned after we’ve got the blockades built,” she said. “Too risky to leave them sitting around town. If the bikers get in before we know about it, they could find our guns and use them against us. Better and safer if we assign each weapon to a person, and then trust that person not to let it out of their sight.”

  Garrett gave her a sharp nod. “I agree.” Turning to Elisa and the others, he said, “We’ll keep them here for the moment. Once we’ve got the defenses set up, we’ll figure out who gets what, and what our plan of action is going to be if—and when—those bikers make the mistake of coming here.”

  The rest of the townspeople scuttled off, talking among themselves about the locations where they wanted to set up blockades, and Alice drew closer to Garrett.

  “And us, Cap?” she asked quietly. “You’ve given everyone else a task. What are we going to do?”

  “Get out there and help wherever we’re needed,” he returned. “I want this town as fortified as it can be before night falls. When we go to sleep tonight, I want to know that our defenses are strong. I don’t know when those bikers are going to make their play, but I’m sure it’s coming. We have to be secure when it happens.”

  Alice didn’t answer. She merely nodded and took three steps forward, not bothering to wait for Garrett. He didn’t hesitate either; his people were out there getting ready for the attack he knew was coming, and they needed more than just his words to help them. As long as he had a set of hands and a strong back, he meant to be in the thick of it, making sure they were ready for anything.

  The next three hours were both a blur of action and a long, dragging exercise in overexertion as Garrett helped to push and pull vehicles from the parking lots and driveways of the small town to the edges, where they would make up the barricade. Trinity Ranch had never played home to that many people, small as it was, but there was at least one vehicle to each household. The cars were all dead now, of course, so they couldn’t drive them to their new locations. That didn’t mean they weren’t going to play a part.

  Garrett jumped into a fairly new sedan, took off the emergency brake, and then got out of the car, gesturing to Shawnee to take his place.

  “Grab the wheel and make sure we’re going in the right direction,” he told the boy. “We need the end of Ash Street, right where it hits the desert between the old market and the building next to it. You know the place?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes overly large, and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel. Garrett paused for long enough to see that the kid’s knuckles were white with tension.

  “You don’t need to strangle the steering wheel,” he said with a grin. “Just make sure we get to the right spot.”

  The boy smiled at him, embarrassed, and then Garrett was striding back toward the rear bumper, where Greyson was already hunched down.

  “Ready?” Greyson asked.

  Garrett wiped a hand across his brow, knowing that he was leaving a grease smear on his face—and not caring. This was the fourth car he’d helped to move, and his energy was dwindling.

  “Ready as I’m going to get,” he answered.

  Greyson chuckled. “Don’t think any of these cars were meant to be pushed by two men, and on roads that are more dirt than asphalt at this point.”

  Garrett ducked down and put his shoulder to the back of the car. “Agreed,” he murmured. “But we just can’t spare anyone else. This has to be done before dark falls or we’re going to spend a long, sleepless night staring out our windows. You ready?”

  “Something tells me we’re going to be doing that anyhow,” Greyson grunted. Still, he put both hands on the back of the car and leaned into it. “But let’s do this. On my count. One. Two. Three.”

  The two men lunged forward, grunting, and the car started a slow roll down the driveway and toward the main street. In the driver’s seat, Shawnee started madly turning the wheel, and the car slowly rounded the turn toward the right, heading toward Ash. Unfortunately, the moment they hit the main road, they also hit about half an inch of sand, which had blown in over time and now covered the roads.

  Garrett and Greyson both ducked down and shoved harder, all their energy on the task at hand, and didn’t talk any more.

  By the time night was starting to fall, the people had managed to get almost everything on Garre
tt’s checklist finished. Manny had reported back to tell Garrett that they’d built barricades—with explosives—in three different places, as well as digging several pits, which they then covered with brush.

  “It’s not subtle, and it’s not sexy, but it’ll get the job done,” the man said, nodding his head.

  Garrett had clapped his hand down on Manny’s shoulder and said that he was certain it was perfect.

  He’d then heard reports from several others. Furniture had been toted down from all the houses and piled in the spaces between buildings. Further explosives had been set up on some of the larger piles. Cars had been pushed, pulled, and manhandled into position on the smaller streets and throughout the town, and Garrett himself had seen the fruits of that particular labor. The neighborhoods were free of cars, for the most part, and the town felt more like a fortified military base than a small New Mexico town. He’d sent Greyson and Shane to the front of town as the first watch.

  He looked around at the people with him and gave them all a smile and a raised fist of solidarity.

  “Well done, gang,” he said brightly. “I know you’re all tired, but now that the defenses are laid, we can all go home and breathe a bit easier. I feel sorry for those bikers. If they think they’ve got an easy target in this town, they’ve got another thing coming!”

  He was just about to start assigning weapons and talking about the plan if and when the bikers from Helen Falls showed up when Elisa strolled into the group, carrying a basket in front of her like some character from a musical.

  “Apples,” she exclaimed. “I’ve just been out in the orchard and there were finally enough of them to pick. I thought they’d make the perfect afternoon snack. Perk everyone up after all the construction.”

  She gave Garrett a grin at the last sentence, and he grinned back, then strode forward to take one of the apples. He bit into it, allowing the juice to run down his chin, and closed his eyes in pleasure.

  He’d thought the orchards a waste of time when the townspeople first told him about them, given the lack of water and the heat. But now that the temperatures were dropping, the trees had started producing fruit from the buds and flowers he’d seen months ago.

  He wasn’t sure anything had ever tasted so sweet before.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve had anything fresh,” Alice moaned, licking her lips after her first bite. “Do you supposed this is what Heaven tastes like?”

  “Like apples?” Garrett asked, frowning at the fruit in his hand. “It couldn’t possibly. I mean, what if people get there who don’t like apples?”

  “And why would Heaven have a taste, anyhow?” Shawnee asked. “I don’t think you’re supposed to eat it.”

  Garrett’s shoulders shook with laughter at the boy’s observation. He was just turning to Alice to say something else when his body went still and cold at a sudden ruckus from the other side of town.

  “Those were gunshots,” Alice said quietly.

  And then they were running toward them, Garrett already drawing the handgun he always kept in his waistband.

  Chapter 5

  Garrett skidded to a stop at the corner where Main Street hit the edge of town and raked his gaze over the land in front of him. There should have been someone there, right in front of the pile of furniture and goods—and there wasn’t.

  Then, to his surprise, Greyson showed up at his left elbow.

  “What the hell are you doing back here?” Garrett huffed. “You’re supposed to be on watch!”

  Greyson, who seemed to have run from somewhere else, was huffing almost as hard as Garrett. “I let Ben relieve me,” he said quietly. “I’d been here for two hours and needed to use the bathroom. He’d come up to ask a question about the blockade, and I asked him to take the next watch. What’s going on? Who’s shooting?”

  Garrett looked back out into the square where Ben should have been. “That’s a very good question. And where exactly is Ben?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Manny said grimly from behind them.

  “So there is,” Garrett answered. He glanced one way, then the other, and began strolling forward into the square, leaving Manny, Greyson, and the rest of the crowd shocked at his audacity.

  A moment later, when no shots rang out, Manny and Greyson hustled forward to follow him. The three of them walked quickly through the square and out into the sand of the desert, this being a town that butted right up to the rocky desert, and it took Garrett only moments to see something ahead of them that wasn’t quite right.

  Ben, it seemed, was still alive. And he looked like he was struggling with something about one hundred feet ahead of them.

  Garrett broke into a run and dashed through the rocks and sand, avoiding cacti as he went, never taking his eyes off Ben, who he could now see was actually sitting on top of someone.

  “Who the hell is that?” Greyson muttered from behind him.

  Garrett grunted, not caring to waste breath on saying that he obviously didn’t know who that was. Then, to his surprise, he realized that he did recognize the guy. Skinny but lanky, with heavily tattooed arms and long, greasy hair tied behind his head in a ponytail. Yes, he was now squirming on the ground, Ben straddling his middle, but Garrett would swear that if the guy stood up, he’d be tall enough that Garrett would have to look up at him.

  It was the same man who’d stopped them when they first entered Helen Falls. The man who had joked with him and Bart, and then saved Alice from the man who’d gotten too familiar with her. The man who’d laughed when she sent that man to his knees in pain.

  His heart skipped at the confluence of events, the strange sense of knowing someone who shouldn’t be here, and a moment later he realized how complicated this was about to get. When they were in Helen Falls, he’d thought that this might be a good man who had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. A man who might actually be worth something more than the biker gang he’d found himself aligned with.

  But if he’d attacked the people of Trinity Ranch, Garrett was going to have to rethink his opinion of the guy. And quickly. He also wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone that he recognized the man—or that he’d had generous thoughts about him. He was just starting to win the people over again. Admitting to having kind of liked someone from Helen Falls—even if it was true—would send them right back to Steve.

  Garrett jerked to a stop right next to Ben and the guy he was holding down, and bent over, his chest heaving. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Ben drew his fist back and punched the tattooed guy right in the chin, bringing the squirming to a sudden halt. Then he looked up at Garrett, Greyson and Manny.

  “Found this guy hiding around the side of one of the buildings,” he said. “Doesn’t take much to look at him and attach him to the Helen Falls crew. Doesn’t take a whole lot to go from there to thinking he’s probably a scout for them. Didn’t want him going back and telling them what we were doing.”

  At that, Garrett saw his opening. “You’re right about him being from Helen Falls,” he replied, dropping to his knees next to the men. “He’s the one who searched us when we went over there to return the tanker.”

  Suddenly the guy started squirming again, and Ben, surprised at the sudden activity, was nearly thrown off his body. He recovered quickly, grabbed the guy, and punched him in the face once, and then again. Garrett caught his hand when he was winding up for the third punch and glanced down at the guy on the ground.

  “We know who you are,” he said bluntly. “I can identify you, so there’s really no point in trying to keep it quiet. What are you doing here?”

  When the man opened his mouth, Garrett drew back his own hand, ready to let it fly.

  “The truth,” he muttered. “You’re in no position to try to get clever.”

  The man sucked his lips in, thinking, and eventually narrowed his eyes and nodded. “I know you. You’re the one who brought in that fake tanker. One who caused all the problems with the bikes.
”

  Garrett drew his hand back again in a threatening manner and the biker put his hands up in front of him, shaking his head.

  “I don’t want no trouble, mister,” he said quickly. “Yes, I was a member of that gang. But I left them. I’m on my own now.”

  Well, that was interesting. Garrett had certainly thought the guy was too well educated for the biker gang when he’d met him before, so it didn’t seem to be out of the realm of possibility for him to have left them and struck out on his own.

  That didn’t mean Garrett could just believe him out of hand. No matter what he thought about him, personally. The man had been involved with that gang, and that made him suspect.

  He got to his feet, thinking quickly. “Take him to the schoolhouse,” he said to the others. “I’ve met him, and he seemed like a decent person then. Doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth right now, but I can see how it might be the case. He didn’t seem to fit with the biker gang, honestly. I can imagine him having decided to strike out by himself. What’s your name, kid?” He addressed this last question to the biker, still on the ground.

  “Lance,” the man croaked.

  “Lance,” Garrett replied. “We’re going to keep you prisoner, and I need you to tell me the truth about who you are and what you’re doing. If you’re telling the truth, I see no reason to hurt you. If you’re lying to me…”

  He left that threat hanging, turned, and looked into the crowd that had gathered. “Shane, recruit someone to join you and stand watch while we handle this.”

  “You got it,” he replied.

  Garrett started back toward town, leaving Greyson and Ben to bring the prisoner with them. Manny fell into step right next to him, and a quick glance at his face made it clear that he wasn’t happy with Garrett’s decision to allow the prisoner to live.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Garrett said quietly, turning his eyes back toward the town.

  “I bet you do,” Manny replied. “Probably because you realize just as well as me how dangerous this is. You’re bringing a viper back into the nest.”