At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

  “I’m practicing mercy,” Garrett responded quickly. “The bikers would have straight-out shot any of our people. We’re not them. We’re not like they are. I’d like to think that we’re still human enough to at least give the man a chance to explain himself.”

  Manny let out a whisper of a laugh. “Guess that depends on what your definition of human is.”

  Garrett didn’t answer that statement. Manny had been in the military, and he’d been in General Green’s prison for weeks before Garrett showed up. Garrett didn’t really want to know about the things Manny had seen—the things that had made him lose his faith in humanity. That was Manny’s own personal baggage.

  Garrett counted himself lucky to be in a position of still at least hoping for the best from people—even people who had once been on the other side of the line.

  Half an hour later, Garrett had stopped thinking that any good was going to come of questioning their prisoner. Lance was tied to a chair in the basement of the schoolhouse, what was left of their supplies stacked up around him. He was bruised and bleeding from multiple punches to his face, and Garrett wondered if Manny had actually broken the man’s nose with that last one.

  Still, Lance’s story was the same.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” he said again, his voice muffled by the fact that his nose was now full of blood. “I heard a rumor about a big settlement of survivors down in Mexico. Heard tell they had farms and food, and that they were willing to take in anyone who came their way, long as they could hold their own and add to the community. Brought me hope, you know? I haven’t been part of something I actually believe in for so long that I’m starting to forget how it was.

  “I’d had enough of Kraken’s shit, had enough of the rules of that place and the constant fear that I was going to be the next man shot. So I decided I’d get myself out of there. Left in the middle of the night and started walking, and before long I found myself here.”

  Lance sniffled and then grimaced before continuing. “Didn’t want to just walk right into town and take you all by surprise, so I was waiting at the edge for someone to show up. So I could explain who I was, like. Suddenly this guy here”—he gestured at Ben with his chin, a scowl on his face—“starts shooting at me for no good reason, so I do what any smart man would do and start running. The next thing I know this guy is jumping onto my back, taking me to the ground, and trying to beat the crap out of me.”

  He cast a glance up at Garrett from underneath his lashes. “I was glad you showed up when you did. Figure he would have killed me if you hadn’t.”

  Garrett bit his lip, considering. The man had already said that he remembered Garrett, and it was becoming more and more obvious that he had noticed Garrett’s liking for him back in Helen Falls. That had probably looked even stronger when Garrett decided to bring him back for questioning rather than killing him outright. Lance was now milking it for all it was worth, trying to make himself out to be the victim.

  That didn’t mean Garrett was going to believe him. If Lance thought he was a sucker, he was about to have a rude awakening.

  Garrett paused, though, because he was damned if he could bring himself to disbelieve him, either. The fact was, everything coming out of Lance’s mouth sounded reasonable. Garrett had seen how Kraken treated those in his gang, and what he did to those he didn’t like. It hadn’t seemed a flexible or particularly rewarding way to live, and Garrett could imagine that for someone who had found himself there by mistake, perhaps, or said that he’d join and then started questioning himself…

  Well, Garrett himself had wanted to run, hadn’t he? He’d talked the whole town into it. He couldn’t blame Lance for having had the same idea. Particularly when there were stories about a place in Mexico that would be safe for those like them. A place where you could actually start to feel human again.

  “I don’t believe a word he’s saying,” Greyson muttered. “You’re not buying this, are you, Garrett?”

  Garrett bit his lip. “I’m of two minds, to be honest,” he said. “On the one hand, I can see someone having heard of the settlement in Mexico and thinking that it sounded like a pretty good destination. Hell, we were on our way there ourselves, at one point. Can’t blame a man for wanting to improve his station in life.”

  “And on the other hand, he’s from Helen Falls,” Greyson responded, his voice low and threatening. “Those men have been liars and bullies since we found out about them. Can’t see why we’d believe one of them now.”

  “Maybe we should just put a bullet in his brain,” a voice said suddenly from the other side of the room.

  Greyson, Manny, Ben and Garrett whirled around to see Steve lounging at the bottom of the stairs, his hands in his pockets, a cocky look on his face.

  “Y’all didn’t tell me we had a visitor,” he drawled. “Doesn’t sound like he’s welcome here, though.” He started walking forward, looking Lance up and down as he walked. “If he’s from Helen Falls, a bullet would be too good for him,” he snarled.

  Garrett put up a hand. “First of all, Steve, you weren’t invited to this particular party. What are you doing here?”

  Steve cast him a narrow-eyed glance. “Came down here to catalog how much water we have left,” he spat in Garrett’s direction. “Didn’t expect to find you four harboring a fugitive.”

  “He’s hardly a fugitive,” Garrett clarified, his blood steaming at the intrusion. Who the hell did Steve think he was, barging in here like this and interrupting their efforts? “And we’re not going to have any talk of shooting him, either. We’re not barbarians.”

  Steve stopped and puffed up his chest. “You calling me a barbarian, Garrett? Because if you are, you know it’s gonna cost you.”

  Manny put a hand on Garrett’s tense arm. “Ain’t worth it, Cap,” he said quietly. “I know how badly you want to do something about that, and believe me, I’d have your back. But it’s not worth the trouble. Let him go.”

  Garrett swallowed hard, working to get his temper under control, and finally blew out a slow breath. “Get back to the others, Steve,” he said quietly. “This is none of your business. If it comes to it and we decide to involve the rest of the town, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

  Steve glared at him for a moment, and Garrett decided at that moment to test him. See if the man really had what it took.

  “In fact,” he said quickly, pulling the gun from his waistband, “if you’re so tough, so set on doling out justice and being a leader…” He cast a look at Greyson, and then one at Manny. “How about you just take care of him for us?”

  Steve jerked to a stop, his face growing suddenly pale, and Garrett suppressed the grin he could feel at the corner of his mouth. Reaching toward Steve, he continued to offer the gun, turning it so that he was holding the nose and Steve could easily grab the handle.

  The other man took a step backward, shaking his head.

  “You know, I, uh, thinking about it now… you’re probably right. Better to get as much information out of him as you can. I’ll leave you fellows to it.”

  Turning, he practically ran up the steps.

  Garrett watched him go, a strange urge to laugh bubbling up in his chest, and then turned back to the others. He caught Greyson’s eye and saw the same laughter there, repeated again in the faces of Manny and Ben.

  “And that’s the man who wants to be leader,” he muttered. Looking to Lance, he turned his mind back to the matter at hand. “Doesn’t mean I think he’s wrong,” he said ominously. “I still don’t trust you.”

  He glared at Lance, wishing he had some way of knowing whether the man was telling the truth. Wishing he knew whether he could trust him. If he was trustworthy, perhaps he could tell them what had happened back at Helen Falls. Whether Riley and Bart had been killed—or whether they’d even been found yet.

  The men moved further to the side of the room so Lance couldn’t hear them.

  “Wouldn’t be hard to put a bullet in his head and ju
st let that be that,” Manny observed, his voice low.

  But Garrett shook his head. “And what? If he is a scout, and we kill him, Kraken and the others will be even angrier. It’ll increase the chance that they come at us before we’re ready. If they’re holding Bart and Riley, they could do something to them in retaliation. They could make it a hell of a lot harder for us to eventually get out of here. Killing him might solve one problem, but it’ll open up a range of others.”

  “So what do we do?” Ben asked.

  Garrett felt as if they were stuck in some sort of gangster movie, where they were talking about how to bury a body or something. This entire scene had a haze of fantasy over it, like it couldn’t actually be happening. His next words only added to the surreal atmosphere.

  “Blindfold him,” he said. “Take him out of town and keep walking until the ranch is out of sight, then point him in the direction of Mexico. If he’s truly on his way there, then no one has to get hurt.”

  “What?” Greyson exploded. “You’re just going to let him go?”

  Manny put a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Garrett, this is madness,” he said. “You can’t just turn him free. Not when we don’t know what he’s doing here—or whether he’ll go back to Kraken and tell him what we’re up to.”

  “I also can’t shoot him in cold blood,” Garrett said simply. He glanced up at Manny, then Ben, and then Greyson. “Can any of you? Can any of you discount the possibility that he might be doing exactly what he says he’s doing, and escaping? Could you blame him if he was, after we’ve all had the same thought? Can you guarantee that he’s on the wrong side of this fight? Can you take his life, sure that you’re doing the right thing?”

  Three scowling faces stared back at him, but then gazes started sliding to the left and the right, and Garrett knew he had his answer. These men might not be happy with this decision, but they could see the sense in it. They couldn’t kill Lance. Not without knowing for sure that he was still working for Kraken. If there was even a chance that he was innocent, they had to let him go.

  Anything less would make them no better than those bikers.

  Chapter 6

  Garrett walked through the line of people, adjusting a person’s aim here, drawing their shoulders back there, straightening an elbow, tipping a head, and generally giving them all better form as they aimed at the row of targets in the distance.

  “All my life shooting, and I never thought I’d have to teach anyone else about it,” he murmured to Alice, who was walking next to him.

  She breathed out a laugh. “Needs must, I guess?”

  And that was about it, he knew. Needs must, indeed. After Lance had come around, Garrett had started thinking about how vulnerable they all were, sitting out here in the desert without any reliable backup. The thing they did have was plenty of weapons. It seemed they’d found them in almost every town they’d ransacked. Personal armories in houses, entire aisles of weapons in the stores, rack after rack of guns in police departments.

  He’d have thought those would be the first things people would have grabbed after the EMPs hit and the entire world went to hell, but evidently everyone had been more concerned about food and water than protection. They also had grenades and some explosives, sure, but more importantly, they had a range of handguns and rifles—some of them military-level sniper rifles. It had taken Manny and Ben precisely thirty seconds to identify them all and start telling him what they were good for, and they’d grabbed everything they could fit into the truck or their pockets during every raid where they found them.

  Now, with the barricades built and the defenses set, Garrett was making sure that his people knew how to use those guns. Because they were next to useless sitting in an underground armory. In the hands of the people, though, they just might be the thing that decided any battle.

  He got to the end of the line and found Elisa there, wearing pants and a leather vest that looked like she’d stolen it out of some Wild West show. She was holding a handgun up in front of her, and shaking so badly that she’d be more likely to hit the sand in front of her feet than the target. That sort of nervousness could put others at risk, too—not just herself.

  Pursing his lips, Garrett stepped up behind her and stretched his arms out right next to hers, covering her hands with his. He held as still as possible, quieting the shaking in Elisa’s body, but felt her stiffen at his proximity. Well, stiff was better than shaking, and maybe it would give her a better shot at figuring out the right posture.

  “Relax,” he said quietly in her ear. “You want your elbows locked and your arms straight and strong.” He stretched their arms forward a bit more, locking his elbows in demonstration. “But keep your hands as relaxed as they can be. Too tense, and you’ll jerk the gun when you fire it and miss your target. Jerk it too much and you might just hit a friend instead of an enemy.”

  “I’ve never been any good with guns,” she told him, her voice quavering. “I don’t know how smart it is to give me one.”

  “You’ll do fine,” he assured her. “And I want everyone here to be able to defend themselves if it comes down to it. It will also help us out if everyone can fight. The bikers will never see that coming. They’ll never think a little bitty thing like you might be deadly to them. And that, Elisa, will be the death of them. Right?”

  He felt the quiver of her laughter, though she didn’t give it enough air to make it out of her mouth.

  “Right,” she said instead. “They’ll never see me coming. Now if only I can hit them.”

  He took a deep breath then blew it out, getting ready to try to communicate what it was to shoot a gun. It was surprising that a woman who had lived out in the wilderness like this didn’t know, and had never been hunting, but then again he’d known Elisa for several months and felt comfortable saying that she was the sort of woman who would rather defeat you with brain over brawn.

  “Straighten your arms, but only so far as is comfortable,” he said, demonstrating. “Keep your wrists tense. Relax your hands. Look down the nose of the gun and try to cover your target with the nose so that you’re shooting straight. Then…” He nudged her hands just a bit to the left. “When you pull the trigger, you’ll almost inevitably pull the gun in that direction. If you account for that when you’re aiming, you’ve got a better chance of pulling the gun and still hitting your target. See what I mean?”

  “Makes sense,” she breathed, as still as a rabbit in the crosshairs.

  “And now,” he said, removing his hands and leaving hers in the exact position. “You fire. But don’t yank on the trigger. Just squeeze. Like you’re working a spray gun, only…”

  “Deadlier,” she finished, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Definitely deadlier,” he agreed, grinning. “But also firmer. Metal is harder to move than plastic. So you’ve got to be more decided about it.”

  There was a pause as she digested that information, and then, “Now?”

  “Now,” he said.

  He felt her shoulders move up in front of him, saw the gun waver just a bit, then grow steady, and a moment later she squeezed the trigger.

  The flash blinded him, but he stepped back from her and took a few steps toward the makeshift target—plywood painted with some spare orange paint they’d found in the garage. When he could make the target out again, he whooped in excitement and swept her up in a hug, too elated at the progress—at something good happening—to stop himself.

  “Bull’s-eye!” he shouted. “And on your first try! Elisa, if I didn’t know any better I would say you’ve done this before. It looks to me like you’re a natural.”

  She gave him a crooked grin. “I definitely want to practice more to make sure that wasn’t just beginner’s luck. But you’re right. It will feel good when they underestimate me. Because I’ll be able to prove them wrong.”

  She turned back to the target and lifted her hands again, taking herself through the steps on her own this time—and shooting a sec
ond bull’s-eye—and Garrett turned to walk back down the line, still grinning to himself. When he looked up, he saw Alice staring at him, then looking pointedly at Elisa, and then back at him, one eyebrow lifted in question.

  He shrugged his shoulders, not caring to think about that too closely. No matter what Alice thought she’d seen, this was nothing more than him teaching his people how to defend themselves—and each other—if and when those bikers showed up. Thinking about anything beyond that was…

  Well, at this point, it felt like a waste of energy. There were too many other things to worry about right now.

  Chapter 7

  Garrett was walking quickly through town, his blood still singing at the success of the shooting class, when he heard the voices.

  It wasn’t that no one should be talking in town. It wasn’t that it was uncommon to hear voices. It was the fact that voices being used as weapons sounded different than voices being used for just casual communication. And something about the voices he was hearing right now told him very definitely that they accompanied some very unpleasant physical actions.

  He drew to a stop and narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out where the voices—male, and aggressive, in a suggestive, teasing sort of way—were coming from. There, he thought, his eyes going to the alley across the street. He hadn’t drawn parallel with it yet and couldn’t see down it, but someone had someone else in that alley, and whatever they were saying, he was betting they weren’t talking about the weather.

  He crept toward the alley, cutting diagonally across the street so he could approach along the wall that connected to the small street. This wasn’t a well-traveled part of town, so there was no one else on the sidewalks. In any other city—in the world as it was before—it would have made this part of town ideal for any sort of underhanded activities.

  But they were also living in a very small community, where everyone knew everyone else. The thought of anyone doing anything offensive or damaging to another resident was… beyond his ability to understand. It didn’t make any sense.