Hero: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 7)

by Tom Abrahams

  Marcus was impressed the technique was still in use. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He wondered, though, if they’d have been better to try to sneak across or find a tunnel. He hadn’t anticipated the twenty questions from an armed guard.

  The guard glanced at Dallas and back at Marcus. Then he asked Dallas, “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Lou,” said Dallas.

  “Lou? That’s a man’s name.”

  “It’s short for Louise,” said Dallas. “But she doesn’t like Louise.”

  Marcus chuckled. He dropped his chin and shook his head. The guard bristled.

  “What’s funny?” asked the guard.

  “I’m just thinking about his wife,” Marcus said. “She wouldn’t like it if she heard you suggest her name was manly.”

  “That so?”

  “Yep,” said Marcus.

  “Yep,” said Dallas.

  The guards exchanged glances through the cab of the truck, and the radio man nodded with his chin. The guard at the passenger’s side backed away from the truck and lowered his weapon.

  “All right,” said the radio man, “move on, then. Approach slowly and they’ll open the gate for you.”

  Marcus thanked the radio man, started the engine, and left the windows down. He pressed on the brake and shifted into gear, eased off the brake, and let the truck lurch forward.

  As they neared the wall, one of the guards near the gate swung it open. The bottom of the gate scraped against the road. Marcus eyed the guard and nodded at him as they drove through the gate and under the wall. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty. He wasn’t even alive when the Scourge hit. He probably didn’t know a world without the wall. Marcus wished he’d never known one with it.

  He pressed the accelerator and the truck responded. The engine rumbled. A warm breeze blew into the cab through the open windows. It smelled of dust and sweat.

  Marcus Battle was back in Texas.

  On the side of the road was a sign that told him Beaumont was thirty miles west and Houston was one hundred and eighteen. Baird had to be close to five hundred miles.

  “There’s no place like home,” he said.

  CHAPTER 19

  APRIL 19, 2054, 7:00 AM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  RISING STAR, TEXAS

  Lou sat with her back against the wall of the treehouse, her hands resting on her belly. Her attention was focused on the shafts of pink early morning light poking through the pine slats opposite her. She hadn’t slept much. The cramping was gone, the labor pains likely false. That was something, at least. Still, they had a long day ahead of them. Maybe two.

  David stirred and rolled onto his side to face her. “Momma, I gotta pee.”

  Lou smiled and put a hand on his head. She tousled his hair. “C’mon. Let’s climb down. We need to hit the road anyhow.”

  After David took care of business, Lou watered the horse. Then she pulled out a package of jerky one of the Pop Guards had carried with him. Sitting on a stump, she unwrapped the brown paper, picked out a couple of the thicker pieces, and handed one to David.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Jerky.”

  “Jerky?”

  Lou closed the package and stuffed it back into her pack. She held her piece between her fingers. Holding it up, she turned it over in her hands.

  “Yeah,” said Lou. She sniffed it and tore off a piece with her teeth. “It’s meat. You cut off the fat and then dry it with salt.”

  David tentatively lifted his piece, studying it. “What kind of meat?”

  Lou chewed. The jerky was sweet, a little gamey, and tasted something like venison but not quite. She tongued the jerky into her cheek and held it there, relishing the brine. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it tastes good and it’s got protein. You’re gonna need that today.”

  “Why?”

  “Protein gives you energy. The salt will help you keep water in your body. That’ll help with dehydration.”

  David sniffed the piece of jerky in his hand and wrinkled his nose. “I thought salt made you thirsty?”

  Lou chewed and swallowed. “It does, but it also helps your body.”

  David put the jerky to his lips and sucked on it. Then he tore off a piece and chewed. The sour look on his face remained.

  Lou chuckled. “Don’t like it?” She took another bite.

  David shrugged. He chewed and swallowed and tore off another bite.

  Lou remembered how she’d been a picky eater before the Scourge. Her mom would fix the family a big meal or her dad would cook out on the grill in their backyard in Austin. Half the time, Lou wasn’t interested in whatever her parents had made.

  “There are starving kids in Syria,” her dad would say, “and you’re wasting food.”

  Lou would drag her fork across her full plate and eye him. Raising an eyebrow and smirking at her parents, she’d challenge, “Name three.”

  “Three what?” her mom would ask.

  “Three starving kids in Syria.”

  That got a laugh and got them off her case. Then the Scourge killed most of the world, including her mother, and being picky wasn’t an option. David was never picky. Even when he clearly didn’t like the modest offerings on his plate, he would eat them without complaint. He was a good kid. He was too good for this world.

  Lou swallowed another cheek full of jerky and blinked back a swell of tears. She popped the last of the jerky into her mouth and wiped her hands on her thighs. “All right, let’s go, dude. Finish your jerky. We’ve got a lot of riding ahead of us today.”

  “My butt hurts,” said David.

  Lou smiled. “Mine too. I think we rode so much yesterday the baby is saddle sore.”

  David smiled. He tore off another piece of jerky and chewed.

  Lou left him at the stump and moved back to the horse. It was tied off at the treehouse oak. She checked the rifle in the scabbard, made sure it was loaded, and pulled her knives from the saddlebag. She slid one into each of her boots, keeping the grips accessible, and slid a third into a sheath at the small of her back. It wasn’t comfortable, especially given the constant ache along the base of her spine, but it was the best she could do.

  Lou bloused the oversized coat Rudy had given her to wear and did her best to make sure the baby bump wasn’t visible. Taking a swig from a canteen, she swished the warm water around in her mouth, freeing the bits of jerky stuck in her teeth.

  To the east, the sun was above the horizon. The pink had given way to the pale blue of early morning. Thin, wispy clouds painted the low sky with wide brushstrokes.

  To the west, the sky was still shades of purple where it met the uneven ground. Her eyes followed the hues until she was looking almost overhead. Inhaling deeply, Lou studied the heavens, deep in thought.

  “I’m ready,” said David.

  Lou jumped. She hadn’t noticed him sneak up on her. Startled, she put a hand to her chest. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

  She helped David into the saddle and climbed on behind him. The muscles in her back and thighs protested. They were sore and didn’t like the familiar stress of riding a horse.

  With a tug of the reins and kicks with her stirruped heels, Lou urged the horse forward. It loped at first but quickly found its stride. They reached the road and she guided the horse east. She glanced back at the treehouse and the piles of blackened char past it.

  Lou was glad she’d found the place, that she’d taken the time to connect with Marcus. She was also profoundly sad. As much pain as she’d endured, as much as she’d lost, it was almost incomparable to what Marcus had managed to bear.

  No wonder he is the way he is, she thought.

  No wonder he’d been on a dark, vengeful quest when she met him at that gas station. No wonder he’d always carried something heavy, something invisible and burdensome. It was something she hadn’t fully understood until she’d knelt in front of the five crude grave markers,
until she’d spent the night with her child in the treehouse Marcus built for his.

  They rode east and Lou tightened her hold on her son, feeling his back against her belly, as the horse moved at a good pace farther away from the place Marcus had called home. It wasn’t long before David was leaning back against her, his head bobbing with sleep.

  He reminded her so much of Dallas: thin, smart, sensitive. They were all good things, and they all had their drawbacks.

  As her body swayed with the motion of the Appaloosa, she wondered how Dallas and Marcus were faring. She knew Dallas was angry and supposed Marcus wouldn’t have it.

  A smile crept across her face as she thought about the two of them arguing, about Dallas calling Marcus out for his absence, and Marcus telling Dallas he was a moron. She laughed out loud, envisioning their banter. It woke David. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  “Sorry for waking you,” she said. “You were out for a couple of hours.”

  David yawned. “It’s okay,” he said. He stretched his arms and then pointed into the distance.

  Lou followed the direction of his finger. Before he said anything, she knew his next question. A cloud of dust bloomed like smoke a mile ahead of them. Then the question came.

  “What’s that?”

  Lou narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on whatever was headed toward them. The plumes of dust rose higher into the sky, spread wider across the road. Her pulse quickened. Whatever it was, it was moving fast and headed straight toward them.

  “Momma,” said David, “what is that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Good people or bad people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do we do?”

  The land on either side of the road stretched as far as she could see without any visible place to hide. Lou could go back, race toward Marcus’s place. But that was more than two hours in the wrong direction.

  She’d seen a ramshackle barn, collapsing under its own weight, maybe five or six miles back. But that might not be any better than standing in an open field of dead weeds and cracked earth.

  “Momma?” David pressed. There was urgency and anxiety in the way he said her name.

  “We’re going to hide,” she said. “Hang on.”

  Giving one last glance at the growing cloud of dust, she made out what looked like horses. Five or six horses, spreading beyond the edge of the narrow road. There might be more than a half dozen. She couldn’t see from this distance. But they were closing, and there was a good chance they could see her.

  Lou yanked the reins and spun the horse one hundred eighty degrees. She drove her heels into its sides, and it reared its head before accelerating into a gallop. The Appaloosa was fast, faster than she’d expected, and the warm breeze on her face felt good. It blew her hair from her face and dried the sweat at her brow and on her neck behind her ears.

  Clinging to David with one hand, they bounced in the saddle. Lou tightened her legs, bracing them against the up and down of the gallop. Her thighs burned, her back ached, but she urged the horse faster.

  She checked. The cloud wasn’t closer to them. If anything, they might have lost ground. Up ahead, the crumbling barn leaned toward them. Lou slowed the horse and guided it off the road and onto the dirt. It trotted the rest of the distance and, after dismounting, she tied it to the back side of the barn. It was the least visible spot from the road.

  The barn, or shed, was built on a concrete foundation. A long forking crack that reminded Lou of a lightning bolt stretched across the gray and brown expanse. There was a rough-hewn cedar pole in the center of the space that reached up to a lattice of beams forming a false ceiling beneath what was left of the peaked roof. The beam was bolted into the concrete floor at its center but leaned at a slight angle where two of the bolts were loose from their hold.

  Standing inside a gaping hole, which might have once been the doorway to the barn, Lou told David to stay put. She hustled, as best she could, back outside and loosened the Appaloosa’s tie. She walked the horse inside the structure and affixed the lead to the center pole.

  A trio of large cockroaches skittered across the floor and disappeared under a haphazard pile of cut wood in one corner of the barn. Lou followed them and then scanned the rest of the space.

  The interior was bathed in arcs of early midmorning light. Angled shafts beamed through the wide holes in the roof and the spaces between the gray boarded walls. Dust danced and spiraled in the light. Lou tasted it in her mouth. She coughed and cleared her throat.

  On the wall closest to the road there was a large box or piece of equipment covered in a dust-covered tarp. There was a stack of four or five chairs. A rusted spike aerator was parked along the adjoining wall, its hitch pointed diagonally upward. Leaning against the wall was a piece of sheet metal. It was jagged on one end and peppered with rust spots, giving it a burnt orange hue.

  Directly behind Lou was a wooden A-frame ladder. It was collapsed and lying flat on the concrete. Lou took a couple of steps toward it, studied it, and then looked up at the beams overhead.

  Outside, the rumble of hooves grew louder. Lou smiled at David, told him to be quiet, and moved to the wall facing the road, squeezing herself between the chairs and the tarp. Through a gap, she could see the narrow highway in front of her and the flat expanse on the other side. Dead trees dotted the landscape, their bare limbs stretching out as if reaching for water.

  There was no sign of the approaching horses, but she could hear them. The rhythm of their gallop masked their numbers. Lou wiggled her way back from the wall, leaned on the stack of chairs for balance, and moved to the wall facing northeast.

  She found a narrow gap and pressed against it. Narrowing her gaze to adjust for the brighter light, she saw the coming threat. Eight horses, eight men.

  “Pop Guard,” she muttered. They were perhaps five hundred yards away.

  “What?” asked David, and Lou jumped again. He’d ignored her and was at her side. The kid was sneaky quiet.

  “Sheesh, dude,” she said. “You can’t do that.”

  She noticed the abject fear on her child’s face, his wide, watery eyes and wrinkled brow. His chin trembled and his little hands were clenched into fists.

  Lou crouched down to his level, put her hands on his shoulders, and locked eyes with him. “Sorry,” she said, softening her tone. “I’m not mad at you. You’re just so good at sneaking up on me that sometimes it frightens me.”

  “What’s wrong, Momma? Who’s coming?”

  “Bad guys,” Lou said. “So I need you to do exactly as I say.”

  David nodded.

  Lou hugged him, kissed the top of his head, inhaled the sweaty stink of his hair, and stood up, wincing at the sting of pain in her back. It ran down her leg and made the back of her thigh burn.

  She moved over to the tarp and pulled it back. Dust clouded around her and she fanned it from her face. Once she’d rubbed her eyes, she saw what the tarp was hiding.

  “Perfect,” she said and waved David toward her.

  A large metal tool chest, the kind mechanics used to have in their garages, sat mostly intact. To the left was a large cabinet. Lou slid her fingers into the molded grip at its side and pulled. The door swung open with a loud whine. The space inside was empty other than a collection of dead insects and wisps of spiderwebs.

  “I need you to get inside, David. It’s like hide-and-seek and the quiet game mixed together.”

  David eyed the dark cabinet with suspicion. “There are bugs.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, forcing a smile, “you won’t scare them.”

  David frowned.

  “They’re all dead. They won’t hurt you. And it’s only until the bad guys are gone.”

  David drew his hands to his face and scratched his cheeks.

  “C’mon, David. We don’t have time.”

  David nodded and crawled into the space. It was large enough for him to fit but too small to be comfortable
.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’m going to close the door and cover it up. It’s going to be dark. Try to nap.”

  David closed his eyes and huffed, blowing out a worried breath. Lou closed the door.

  Outside, the Pop Guard was much closer. She could hear individual gallops now. It was less rhythmic and more haphazard. She grabbed both sides of the sheet metal and picked it up. Heavier than she expected it to be, she dropped it with a warbling clang. Lou winced at the vibrating noise she was sure echoed beyond the porous walls of the ramshackle barn.

  “What’s that?” David’s muffled voice came from inside the cabinet. “Momma?”

  Lou grunted and bent her knees to try again. “It’s okay,” she said to reassure her son. “I dropped something.”

  “I love you, Momma,” he said, his sweet voice tearing at Lou’s chest.

  Lou heaved the sheet metal to the tool chest and laid it against the cabinet, repositioning it to cover the door.

  Quickly, she replaced the tarp. “I love you too,” she said. “Very much.”

  She held the underside of her belly and hustled to the horse, withdrew the rifle from the scabbard, and crossed the space to the ladder.

  It took her a minute to lift and open the A-frame. Although her back and thighs protested, she managed. The ladder was tall enough she could reach the overhead framework.

  With the rifle in one hand and her other on the ladder, she climbed it one rung at a time. The ladder was rough, the hinges were loose, and her movements were unsteady. More than once, she wavered, her balance in jeopardy.

  At the top rung, Lou reached over her head and raised the rifle toward the lattice of cedar beams. She rested it on a joint where two beams connected and then lifted herself to the top of the ladder. With what strength she could muster, she pulled up on a beam and lifted one leg, then the other.

  Out of breath, she lay still for a moment, acutely aware of her pulse in her neck and chest. Outside she heard voices. The clop of horses had slowed. Quickly and quietly, she repositioned herself in the rafters and shouldered the rifle.

  She leaned on one side, unable to aim from a true prone position because of the baby. Lou remembered what her father had taught her a lifetime ago and controlled her breathing to slow her pulse.