by Tom Abrahams
It was the LRC that had brought them together almost twelve years earlier. It was the fall of 2042. Both of them were kidnapped, enslaved, and held prisoner in what had been the Pearl of the Concho Hotel on the banks of the Concho River in San Angelo.
The hotel was a base for the gang. Norma and her friend had endured, catching occasional glimpses of one another during their captivity. Then Rudy, Marcus, and Lou had rescued them, freed them from their bonds.
“Is he one of the five?” asked the woman, her call sparking with static. “Mad Max?”
Norma blinked. She hadn’t expected that question. Not this call. She pressed the key and spoke softly.
“Yes,” she said. “Mad Max would be among the five.”
Another pause. Both women felt the same way about Marcus. After their rescue, all of them had come back to Baird. Like Marcus and Lou, the woman had nowhere else to go, so she and her sister had come to live on Norma and Rudy’s property. They lived in a guesthouse and, in exchange for free room and board, they cooked meals and sometimes cleaned.
Like Norma, the woman came to believe that Marcus brought about as much violence as he staved off. He was a magnet for it. And as much as his presence might comfort, it also threatened to ruin the town of Baird. She’d pushed Norma to urge Marcus to find a new home, a place where he couldn’t hurt people simply by being present. Norma didn’t want to talk about it.
The man they’d both decided was too dangerous to live near them was now the man upon whom Lou had called for help. Norma had tried to dissuade her. But given that she refused to allow Rudy to make the trip, that Dallas wasn’t the fiercest warrior, and that they couldn’t risk a conductor coming anywhere near Baird, Marcus was the choice.
“Tell me about your guest,” she said, asking about the person who would help Lou on the final leg of her journey. “Is she up to it?”
“Yes, she is. Mended and good as new.”
In the years after Marcus left Baird, the drought took hold. The Pop Guard was born and raids started. The government took mothers, stole babies, and murdered fathers, all in the name of state security and the preservation of resources.
Nobody believed that was the real reason. It was an excuse. But it didn’t matter. When the woman’s sister gave birth to a second child, she and Norma conspired to find a safe place, a way to help her get there, and a future where the sister, her children, and her husband could live together for the rest of their lives. The underground railroad was born.
Years later, the railroad stretched across the country with all paths leading through Atlanta and one of five so-called harbors. The West Coast was still in its infancy. It was too far a distance, and the railroad’s influence hadn’t rooted as it had east of Texas.
East of Texas it worked. There were hundreds of families living in harbors. They struggled at times, keeping the Pop Guard at bay, but they managed. All of it was thanks to the ingenuity of Norma and her friend.
Norma had remained in Texas, content to anonymously run the operation inside the wall. The Pop Guard had become so much more aggressive in Texas. Getting out of the territory was the hardest part. And Norma didn’t want to leave Baird, her home. The friend, who was the first conductor, took her sister as far as Atlanta. She’d stayed there and set up shop right under the nose of the government and the Pop Guard, hiding in plain sight.
“Good,” Norma said. “Talk again in twenty-four hours. By then we should have the latest from Gun Barrel.”
“Yes,” said the woman. “CL.”
“CL,” said Norma, ending her conversation with the woman now known to most people as Gladys, mother of the underground railroad.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HIGH-OCTANE CONCLUSION TO THE TRAVELER
AN EXCERPT FROM HARBOR:
THE TRAVELER SERIES BOOK EIGHT
CHAPTER 1
April 20, 2054, 3:15 PM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Population Guard Captain Greg Rickshaw cracked the knuckles on his fingers, popping them one at a time. He did this as much to relive the pressure and stiffness in his joints as he did to intimidate the man in front of him.
Each pop echoed in the concrete cell. Each one made the other man blink like a puppy frightened by unexpected noises. The man trembled. Sweat beaded above his upper lip.
Rickshaw watched the man intently, never taking his eyes from him. His own expression was flat, devoid of any emotion. He breathed slowly through his abnormally large nostrils and they flared.
Those nostrils, and his large knotty hands, were the dominant physical features that defined Rickshaw. He used both for effect and his reputation preceded him.
He was powerfully built and looked much younger than his sixty-five years. He’d survived better than most post-Scourge and much as he manipulated the joints in his fingers, he did so with the power structures that collapsed and reformed in the ensuing years. The man was good at forming alliances with the right people, before he flipped on them, selling them out for the next best thing and promises of more power.
Now, as the captain of the government’s Population Guard, he was admired for his tenacity and quick decision making. He was feared for his ruthless application of the law.
The man across from him, chained to the stainless steel table separating the two, was on the verge of whimpering when Rickshaw finally spoke. The captain had been in the cell for a good ten minutes without muttering a word or making a sound, other than his breathing and the crack of his knuckles.
“Before The Scourge,” Rickshaw said, “when you weren’t even a dirty thought in your daddy’s head, I knew this dog breeder.”
The man’s brow twitched with confusion. His mouth flattened.
“You know what a dog breeder is?” asked Rickshaw.
The man blinked twice, perhaps considering if this was a trick question. He shook his head.
Rickshaw folded his hands on the table. His fingers were laced together.
“It’s someone who makes a living by forcing dogs to get pregnant,” he said. “Then, when the dogs are ready, they sell them.”
The air in the cell was cool and dry. But it was fetid with the nutty odor of dried urine. Rickshaw flared his nostrils again and crinkled his nose against the smell. The man sank in his chair.
“What’s your name?” he asked the man. “Where are you from?”
“Call me…Booth,” said the man. “Warner Robins.”
Rickshaw raised an eyebrow. “Warner Robins?” he asked. “Nice place. Was there before The Scourge. Did some contract work at the base. Rented a place off Huber Road.”
Booth didn’t respond. In his seat, he shifted and the cuffs strained against his wrists. The chains slid against the stainless table top and screeched.
Rickshaw smiled. He unlaced his fingers and placed his palms flat on the table.
“That’s neither here nor there,” said Rickshaw. “Right Booth? I was talking about dog breeding.”
Booth’s shoulders slumped and he leaned forward. His eyes darted around the cell, checking the two guards positioned on both sides of the solid metal door. They were armed. They were statues, unmoving and seemingly disinterested in the conversation.
“It always struck me as an odd thing,” said Rickshaw. “Dogs would have litters of puppies, one after the other. The little momma’s would give birth, lick the babies to get ’em breathing and moving, then nurse them for weeks. Then somebody comes and takes the babies. One at a time they get bought, farmed out, whatever.”
Rickshaw lifted one of his hands and waved it like he was shooing away a fly. He watched Booth’s confused reaction, uncertainty as to where this was leading.
“We were populating the world with all these designer puppies,” said Rickshaw. “Way too many of them, given that there were plenty of dog pounds full of homeless dogs.”
The light in the room was bright and sterile. The overhead LED lights were designed to mimic a hospital room, pre-Scourge fluorescent
s, that washed the color from their reach.
Booth was pale. His skin was sallow. It might have been from the lights. It might have been the fear wracking his body, which now shuddered. The man’s teeth chattered.
Rickshaw was using both hands now as he spoke. Wide, sweeping gestures accentuated his message.
“But it was fine for people to take these dogs the world didn’t really need,” he said, “and put them to good use. Train them. Make them whatever each buyer wanted them to be. That was acceptable.”
Outside the room, another door clanged shut. Someone shouted, pleaded for help. There was banging, heels of fists pounding on metal. Booth’s eyes flitted past Rickshaw. His nose twitched.
“I even knew this breeder once who would do these temperament tests on the puppies before selling them,” said Rickshaw. “They’d put the puppy in a stressful situation and test it. How would it react to an open umbrella or a loud noise? What would it do if you pinned it on its back on held it in the air with its legs dangling? Can you believe that Booth?”
Booth’s attention was on the banging beyond his own cell. His eyes were fixed on his own door, pinned between the two armed guards.
Rickshaw reached out toward the Booth’s face, at his distant gaze, and snapped his fingers.
“Booth?” he said. “You hear me? I was talking about temperament.”
The man who called himself Booth blinked back into focus. He nodded loosely, his jaw slack.
Rickshaw put a hand on his own chest, his fingers tented as he tapped his shirt. He wore a high-collared tunic underneath a black leather duster that draped along either side of his chair. The color of the long coat matched the black leather bolero on his head.
“This is next level to me,” said Rickshaw. “The temperament testing? Not only are we taking newborn babies from a mother, but we’re testing it to make sure it’s the right fit for the strangers to whom we’re selling it. Don’t you think that’s next level?”
Booth’s mouth was closed again. The muscles in his jaw flexed, as if he was trying to still the chatter of his teeth. He shrugged and held his shoulders up toward his ears for an exaggerated minute before he lowered them.
Rickshaw smiled again. His dimples deepened on his thin cheeks.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “Next level. The systematic buying and selling of babies. The careful placement of them in an environment where they’re most likely to thrive. It was a system that worked. The economics of it worked. It worked, that is, until it didn’t. Until The Scourge and the drought meant dogs didn’t have much of a place any more other than on spits and in pots.”
Booth’s eyes were glassy now. His chin was trembling again. His body shivered. Rickshaw caught a whiff of something distinctly reminiscent of excrement.
“Do you understand my point here, Booth?” he asked rhetorically. “My point is that what we do, as the Pop Guard, is a necessary function. And it’s no different from what was once a perfectly acceptable system of birth, sale, and employment.”
Booth’s face flushed pink, even in the harsh overhead light, and tears silently rolled down both cheeks. They dripped from his chin and hit the table.
“Am I comparing humans to dogs?” asked Rickshaw. “Yes and no. Take it however you want. I’m merely explaining to you how there is precedent within western society.”
Rickshaw knew how crazy he sounded. That was the point. He didn’t actually believe humans were like dogs. He liked dogs more. He wished he still had the mutt he’d found roadside as a kid.
His point was to send Booth’s mind reeling, to put him off-balance, to make the poor rube believe that he didn’t value human life. That would be useful in the coming minutes as he worked to extract information from the man whose real name didn’t matter.
If he wanted to be a martyr like the nome de plume he’d employed, let him. But Rickshaw doubted he’d stay silent. Whatever the man knew, he would reveal it. However little he kept secret, he’d release into the ether. No doubt. It had worked before. It would work now.
Rickshaw folded his hands again and rested them on the table in front of him. He rested his forearms there and twisted his neck from side to side. A series of short cracks rippled through the solid room.
“I say all of that to say this,” said Rickshaw. “Have you ever seen a beaten dog, one that didn’t end up in the right situation?”
Booth furrowed his brow. That pressed the tears down his face faster. He shook his head.
Rickshaw grinned broadly. He slapped the table with his hands. Booth jumped in his seat. Another putrid waft filtered into Rickshaw’s nose, but he swallowed past it and ignored it.
“Of course not,” he said. “Given your age you might never have even seen a dog at all. Doesn’t matter though. The point remains the same. You catch my drift.”
The banging in the hall stopped. It was quiet again except for the slide of Booth’s chains across the hard surface of the stainless table.
“A beaten dog eventually bites,” said Rickshaw. “It tries to get even. But not before it relents. Not before it cowers and licks its wounds. Not before it quits the behavior that got it cornered and in trouble in the first place.”
Rickshaw stood and used a boot to push back his chair. The feet scraped across the concrete floor. He dragged his fingers along the stainless steel and walked slowly around the edge of the table toward Booth.
“I need answers,” he said. “I need you to be a good boy. Do you understand?”
Booth swallowed hard. He shrunk away from Rickshaw. The binds dug into his wrists. The chains dragged and drew taut.
Rickshaw flipped back the heavy leather edge of the duster and revealed a matching holster. He slid his hand onto the worn, wooden grip of a revolver and flipped the holster’s latch.
Booth’s eyes fixed on the hand, the gun. He squeaked a protest, a plea.
Rickshaw withdrew the gun and spun it in his hand. Back and forth it spun on his trigger finger.
The smile evaporated from Rickshaw’s face. His dimples disappeared. His gray eyes darkened and his expression hardened.
“You gonna be a good boy?” he asked and pressed the revolver’s muzzle against the meat at the back of Booth’s right hand.
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Acknowledgements
I have to begin by thanking you, the readers and fans of Marcus Battle. What began as a little story set in rural Texas turned into so much more during the three and a half years since HOME hit shelves in December 2015.
Hundreds of thousands of you have followed his journey, and mine, as he battled the Cartel, The Dwellers, The LRC, the new government, and his own demons. I hope you found his arc satisfying and you’re happy that Marcus has found peace at long last.
Now it’s on to other adventures and I hope you’ll take the trip with me as I explore new people, places, and events that shape imaginary and speculative worlds. Again, thank you for your loyalty, your praise, your messages of encouragement, and your embrace.
Thanks also to the team of people who help me unleash these stories on the world. Felicia Sullivan is a crack editor. Pauline Nolet and Patricia Wilson cross every T and dot every I. Hristo Kovatliev is a master cover artist who captures the essence of every story in a drawing. And Stef McDaid at Write Into Print makes the books, digital and print, look beautiful with his expert formatting. And Steve Kremer is the finest of beta readers. He fixes the things I break.
Also thanks to two fellow writers; Steve Konkoly and Murray McDonald. The two of them encouraged me to write in the Post-Apocalyptic genre and to self-publish these stories. I owe both of them a debt I can’t repay. The result of their gentle prodding was life-altering.
Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my family. Courtney, Luke, and Sam are the best of agents and managers who are honest critics and unrelenting advocates. I love you all immeasurably. And to my parents, my siblings,
and my in-laws, you are always my best marketers. Now on to the next big adventure…wherever and whenever it might be.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
AN EXCERPT FROM HARBOR: THE TRAVELER SERIES BOOK EIGHT
Acknowledgements
