At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

  He nodded and leaned into her arm, thankful for the support. He didn’t even stop to ask whether she could handle it. He already knew she could.

  They half-hopped, half-fell down the stairs to the front door, but Alice paused before she opened it.

  “Be prepared,” she told him. “It’s not pretty out there. You’re going to see some things that you’ll wish you hadn’t had to see. I have things in my head that I very much wish I didn’t have to remember.”

  He frowned, but nodded without answering, and she threw open the door.

  The first thing he saw was Kristy lying by the fence around his house. She was dead, her eyes staring blankly into the distance, and Garrett knew that her child would have died almost immediately as well. His heart broke into a million pieces as he thought of what Shane would be going through, but Alice hustled him past her body before he could ask any questions.

  From there, he saw Alan and Scott, along with Greyson and Ben, their bodies having been dragged into the street by someone for some unknown reason. Garrett’s gaze rested on Greyson and Ben, two of the only men in town who had truly trusted him.

  If those men had been at home in their beds, armed with their guns, would this have turned out differently? If he’d been able to count on them in the battle itself, would they have managed to save their people?

  “Not likely,” he said, realizing only later that he’d said it out loud.

  “What?” Alice asked, hopping a bit to readjust his weight as they passed Greyson’s body.

  “It’s not likely that they would have helped,” he said, gesturing to his two friends with his chin. “Even if they’d been in town and armed, we were outnumbered.”

  Alice turned him up one of the smaller alleys—a shortcut to the schoolhouse, he thought with relief. He wasn’t even sure he could make it along the shortcut, honestly. The fire in his leg was now an inferno, and he was out of breath with trying to breathe only through his mouth, to avoid the scent of death around them.

  “You know, when I saw them, I thought maybe we should stay and try to bury them…” Alice said, giving in to an emotionality that he rarely heard from her.

  But Garrett shook his head. It didn’t matter if it made Alice emotional. It didn’t matter if everything in his heart cried out to do just that, to save these people from that one last terrible fate of sleeping forever in the street. It was a terrible idea.

  “Too risky,” he told her. “We have to get out of here or we’re going to end up joining them. And I don’t know about you, but dying isn’t on my list of things to do today.”

  “We definitely agree on that point,” she said.

  They turned onto Ash and went for several blocks without speaking, each of them breathing heavily and hopping along as best they could. Then, in what felt like both an eon and thirty seconds, they were traveling up the alleyway and coming out in the square outside of the schoolhouse.

  Steve was there on the ground, spread-eagled and quite dead, and just around the side of the building Garrett could see Lance where he’d fallen.

  And there, leaning up against the schoolhouse itself, were several old motorcycles. The kind you had to jump-start on your own. None of that fancy electrical wiring in the starters.

  “Perfect,” Garrett breathed.

  “I guess they must have had a couple that we didn’t get to,” Alice muttered. “Thank God.”

  They made their way to one of the bikes, and Alice was just working on strapping their bags to the back of it when she suddenly froze. Garrett looked at her, wondering what was wrong, and saw her staring past him, her large, dark eyes glazed with shock.

  Then he felt the nose of a gun against the base of his skull.

  “Turn around. Slowly,” a voice growled in his ear. “And don’t try anything or you’re going to be meeting your maker a lot quicker than you thought you would.”

  Chapter 13

  Garrett gulped, straightened his shoulders—in preparation for what he assumed was about to happen—and turned slowly toward the gun.

  He wasn’t surprised when he saw Jack “Kraken” Nugent on the other end of the weapon, his face twisted into something that looked like a combination between a grimace and a grin, half angry and half victorious.

  “Kraken,” Garrett said quietly.

  “Garrett,” the other man growled, his lips twisting. He moved the gun slightly and pressed it into Garrett’s neck. “Don’t even think of yelling, boy, because there’s no one here to help you, and even if there was, they wouldn’t do you one lick of good. You’re out in the open, unarmed, and wounded to boot. And I’ll tell you what, I gave you a chance before. Thought you’d do the right thing. Thought you’d do the smart thing. But it turns out you’re not smart at all, are you? Turns out you just want to make things difficult on yourself. Well, the time for negotiating is done. This time, we’re playing for keeps.”

  Garrett didn’t answer immediately. He certainly wasn’t going to tell Kraken that they were absolutely armed—with multiple guns, though some of them were in the bag that was now strapped to the motorcycle. He had his gun in his pocket, though, and he was willing to bet good money that Alice was packing some sort of artillery as well. It didn’t seem like information Kraken really needed, though—and it certainly wasn’t something that would help them get out of this situation. Instead, he put his hands up, gesturing that he was going to cooperate, and dropped his eyes a bit.

  That was when he realized that he wasn’t the only one who had been shot. Kraken had been hit as well—and his wound was significantly worse than Garrett’s. A gaping hole in his belly was oozing blood, the crimson fluid flowing out and soaking his clothes.

  Given the look in Kraken’s eye, though, he was ignorant of the wound. Garrett wondered for a moment what sort of drug cocktail the man was on, and whether it was actually keeping him from feeling any pain at all, but quickly put the thought away. Kraken’s mental state—and his drug choice—wasn’t going to be important for much longer. He couldn’t will himself into living without blood.

  If they could keep him talking for long enough, keep themselves alive for long enough, he should just drop dead of the wound he already had.

  Of course that meant Garrett had to keep his mouth shut. Keep from getting himself—and Alice—shot.

  Kraken laughed, evidently having watched the thoughts rushing across Garrett’s face, but then guessed completely wrong at what Garrett might have been considering.

  “I see you’re worrying about your girlfriend,” he snarled.

  Garrett cringed, knowing that the statement meant his eyes had instinctively shifted toward Alice the moment before. Stupid, he told himself angrily. The last thing you do is look at the person you’re thinking about protecting!

  “Don’t worry,” Kraken continued with a smile. “I’ll take care of her when you’re gone. Once you’re out of the way, there won’t be anyone to stop me. Figure I can have my cake and then eat it, too.”

  He leered at Alice, his expression doing little to hide exactly what he meant by that last statement, and Garrett flexed his hands, shouting silently at himself to stand still, to wait it out. No matter what Kraken said right now, it was going to come to nothing—and going after the man for what were mere words and thoughts would get both of them shot. Stand still, he told himself over and over again. A few more minutes and surely the man would be dead on the ground.

  If Alice didn’t kill him first.

  Garrett almost laughed at the thought. Because if he was angry, she had to be absolutely boiling up over the implication that she wasn’t able to take care of herself—or shouldn’t have a choice in who she allowed to touch her.

  Suddenly Kraken cringed and put his hand to his belly, seeming surprised when it came away covered with blood. The gun wavered as he stared in horror at his hand and then his wound, and in that moment, Garrett saw his chance. He shoved himself forward, grabbing for the gun and yanking it from Kraken’s hand, and in the ensuing scuff
le the gun went off.

  Behind him, Alice yelped.

  Horrified, Garrett glanced back, sure that she’d been hit—that his own recklessness had resulted in her death. A split second later, his world disappeared into a field of stars, someone’s fist connecting solidly with his jaw.

  He went to his knees, his ears ringing and his vision coming back in patches and mist, and before he could shake his head to try to retrieve his senses someone was flying at him, landing on top of him and trying to wrestle the gun back.

  His clearing vision told him that it was Kraken on top of him, his long, greasy hair having come out of its ponytail and flying around as he thrashed on top of Garrett, grunting in what Garrett thought must be both pain and effort. Garrett reached further upward with the hand that held the gun, trying to keep it away from the other man. But Kraken had slightly longer arms than he did, and it was only moments before he’d wrapped his own fingers around Garrett’s and started trying to pry the gun from his fingers.

  Desperate, Garrett yanked the gun down toward his body, catching Kraken by surprise with the sudden movement. The other man was thrown off balance and fell to the side, howling in pain at the abrupt change of position. Garrett jumped to his feet, the gun in front of him, the nose aimed squarely at Kraken’s forehead.

  Kraken took a few seconds to figure out what had happened, and then his gaze settled on Garrett’s—and then on the nose of the gun pointed at him. Garrett saw the realization of his new position register clearly in Kraken’s expression, and he knew what was coming before the biker even opened his mouth.

  “Please, man,” Kraken whined. “It wasn’t personal, was it? We’re just two people out here trying to survive, two people competing for the same things! Can’t blame a man for wanting to live, can you? Can’t blame him for wanting to take care of his gang. I never blamed you for it! Never would have—”

  Garrett pulled the trigger and put a bullet into Kraken’s head, silencing the man, then slid the gun back into his belt. It wasn’t what he’d wanted to do, but he’d given mercy before, and had seen it used against him.

  This time, he wasn’t going to give another man the chance to hurt him or his friends.

  He cast one more glance at Kraken, lying dead on the ground, and then turned on his heel and went to his knees next to Alice.

  Chapter 14

  “Alice, are you dead?” he asked, ducking down to get close to her face. A quick glance at her chest showed him that she was still breathing, but he could also see that her eyes were closed, her face still.

  He ran his gaze over her body, trying to see where she’d been hit, what had happened to her. He couldn’t see anything, but he was certain she’d cried out, and he knew she’d gone to the ground right after the gun had gone off. There was no other explanation but that she’d been shot. The only question was where—and how much damage had been done.

  Then he heard a breath that could have been a laugh, and he glanced from her body up to her face. He found her eyes wide open, a crooked smile on her face.

  “Just a flesh wound,” she joked. “Nothing serious. But you should see the look on your face right now! I’ve never seen you so concerned about anything!”

  Garrett stared at her, unable to summon enough emotion to return the laugh.

  “Where were you hit?” he asked numbly, his emotions having deserted him.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and pointed to her right leg. “Nearly the same place you were, actually. Right in the thigh. Outside.”

  He moved to the area she’d pointed out and quickly found what she was talking about. Her jeans were ripped along the outside of her leg and were now coated in blood.

  Standing, Garrett moved quickly to the bags strapped to the motorcycle, unzipped his, and pulled out a T-shirt, a length of gauze, and a roll of tape. He dropped down next to Alice again, well aware that he should be feeling something—anger, relief, concern—but unable to gather himself enough to get any sort of feeling out of his brain. Instead, all he felt was an empty hollowness. A numbness, as if he’d just taken too many shots of tequila and was still breathless with the taste.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  He used his T-shirt to clean the area around the wound, enough to be able to see it clearly, and ducked down to get a better look before the bleeding obscured it again. Just a scratch, he thought. The bullet looked like it had just grazed her skin.

  “It didn’t enter your leg,” he told her quietly. “Looks like it just grazed you, barely broke the skin at all. Lucky,” he finished tonelessly. “It could have been so much worse. And it would have been my fault. I wasn’t being careful enough. Completely forgot that I needed to look out for you too.”

  She put a hand on his arm and squeezed it until he grew still in response and finally met her eyes.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Garrett, and you can stop saying that right this second,” she told him firmly. “And as you can see, I’m not hurt badly. It’s barely even a flesh wound.”

  She gave him another slight grin, inviting him to see the joke, but he just shook his head and went back to tending her wound. She might say that it wasn’t a big deal. That didn’t make her right. And it didn’t make him blameless in the situation.

  He refused to think any more deeply about the situation than that. Yes, he should be feeling something, and this numbness was strange, and most definitely unlike him. He had also just killed a man in cold blood, while that man was begging for his life. There were a number of things he should be feeling right now—concern, remorse, and regret at the top of the list. But he didn’t want to think about the reason for it. Didn’t want to think about the possible implications.

  Instead, he put the gauze gently against the wound and then started winding the tape around it, moving carefully around Alice’s leg again and again until he felt the bandage was secure enough.

  Once he was finished, he looked up at her, meeting her concerned gaze with a frown of his own.

  “Let’s get into the schoolhouse, get as much as we can carry, and get the hell out of here,” he said. “I don’t think any of the other bikers will try anything now that Kraken is dead. If they’re even still alive themselves. But we can’t guarantee that, and I don’t want to be out here like sitting ducks.”

  Alice just nodded, and Garrett pulled her to a standing position, bracing himself against the pain in his own leg in order to get her to her feet. They leaned against each other like a couple of drunks as they moved toward the door into the basement of the schoolhouse, taking turns listing the things they needed to try to find.

  When they got the door open and made their way into the storeroom, Garrett realized that they shouldn’t have been so concerned about picking and choosing what they had to take and what they could afford to leave behind. He’d known that most of the supplies were on the truck when Cora and John took it. He hadn’t been in charge of bringing the rest of the supplies back to the storeroom, though, and hadn’t quite realized how little they’d been left with. They’d had ten crates left to pack into the truck, and whoever had brought them back here had consolidated those into only five. Going quickly through them, Garrett and Alice found a number of protein bars, a packet of beef jerky, one container of iced tea, and three one-gallon jugs of water.

  “My God, this is all we had left?” he breathed, shocked.

  Alice sat back on her heels, her face wearing an expression that must have matched his.

  “This is all the rest of the townspeople left us,” she corrected him. “I told them to grab as much as they could carry before they left for the cave. It looks like they carried a lot more than I’d anticipated, though. This will barely get us through a day.”

  Garrett nodded, speechless for a moment, then straightened his shoulders. “I guess that gives us a day to figure out where else we can go—and where we can find more food and water,” he said firmly. “That’s not a lot of travel time. Stuff this into a bag while I get some fuel, and le
t’s get out of here.”

  He left her to it, moving quickly to the side of the room where they’d kept the fuel, and was gratified to see several full gas cans still sitting there. They hadn’t had much in the way of food or water, but they’d had plenty of fuel, thanks to the tanker he and the rest of the group had stolen from the bikers—and then refused to return. Now that fuel just might save their lives.

  Alice and Garrett climbed up out of the basement for the last time, their arms loaded down with supplies, and then did what they could to secure everything to the bike. It was going to be a tight squeeze, the back of the bike almost completely taken up with bags, but Garrett knew they’d make it work. After all, their lives depended on it.

  Chapter 15

  “What’s the plan?” Alice shouted over her shoulder as they tore out of town on the motorcycle, dust flying up behind them.

  Garrett wrapped his arms more firmly around her middle, trying not to think about how close they were, and bit his lip. They’d agreed that Alice would drive, as her wound was less serious, and less painful than his. Smaller chance of something suddenly hurting her and sending her focus off, and the two of them shooting into the sand or a ditch. But that was the furthest they’d gone in terms of discussions.

  In short, they had yet to come up with any sort of plan in terms of where they were going. They knew they only had a day’s worth of supplies. They knew they had to get to another town before the end of the day, and that they needed that town to have either a friendly population or abandoned homes that they could raid. They were in a precarious position. But at least they had some supplies, and transportation.

  It was more than could be said for the rest of the people from Trinity Ranch.

  “We look for our friends,” he shouted back. “If we can find them, we can try to lead them to someplace where they’ll be safe.”