The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels)

by Russell Blake

  Duke stepped back onto the porch, an AR-15 in one hand and his body armor in the other. He trudged to the guard post, plopped down on the wood bench, and sniffed the discarded stew beside him. He eyed it and, seeing no flies, shrugged and picked up the plate.

  “Waste not, want not,” he whispered, and spooned a heaping portion into his mouth. He’d spent weeks living off rats after the collapse when the food chain had gone belly up and never missed a meal, knowing that in uncertain times any one of them could be his last. He chewed mechanically, wondering what had set the young man off, and then shrugged as he swallowed, the why less important than the inconvenience his departure would cause.

  Chapter 29

  The air in the hot room felt stifling, matching the searing pain being telegraphed from most of Cano’s body as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He tried to move but lacked the energy, and barely managed to open his good eye. He looked down the length of his torso and saw that his arms and legs were wrapped in bandages, and he realized that one of the reasons he was so hot was that his face was also swathed in gauze and cotton, insulating him and retaining his body heat.

  The last thing he remembered was a blinding flash as he rode into the canyon, senses tingling, and then the sensation of flying before everything went black. Cano tried to turn his head, and a lance of pain shot through his skull, the back of which felt like it had been run over by a bulldozer. He must have hit the rocks hard and concussed – even now, he could feel his temples pounding with pain from the impact.

  How long had he been out? He didn’t know. But he felt as weak as a newborn kitten, and his powerlessness and the vulnerability it implied were more disturbing to him than his injuries. He’d suffered near-death before; it went with the territory. But being prone, unable to move, at the mercy of anyone who would do him harm…that was frightening for a man who didn’t scare easily.

  He listened for any clue as to where he was, but heard nothing. Cano realized that he had no vision on his left side and raised his hand to his face. He felt the bandage over his eye and his arm fell back to his side.

  The door opened, and an older man stepped into the room with a notebook in hand and a stethoscope draped around his neck. He regarded Cano in surprise when he saw that he was conscious.

  “You’re…you’re up!” he said, moving to the bedside.

  “Water,” Cano croaked, his voice a harsh rasp.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Just a moment,” the man said, and scurried from the room.

  Two minutes later he was back with a plastic bottle, a straw, and a thermos. “Fruit juice. It’ll help you build back your blood count,” he announced.

  “Just…water.”

  The man leaned toward him with the bottle and dropped the straw through the top. It stuck out a few inches, and the man bent it so he could sip. Cano took measured swallows, wary of drinking too fast, but even so drained the bottle in what seemed like a few moments. The man straightened and nodded.

  “You’re lucky to be alive. I really thought you’d be out a lot longer.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The doctor who pulled a half pound of shrapnel out of you.”

  Cano digested that, and his heart rate increased. “How bad?”

  “Arms and legs got the lion’s share of it, but mostly surface wounds. No serious damage to the muscles. Your head, on the other hand…you’ve got a big gash on the back of it and probably a concussion. And of course, there’s your eye – I couldn’t save it, but it will heal over. Your biggest problem is blood loss, but that should rectify itself with time.” He paused. “You need to drink the fruit juice. It will help.”

  Cano absorbed the news about his eye and grunted. “In a minute.”

  “Let me examine you and see how you’re doing.”

  Cano allowed him to unwrap several of the bandages and check the lacerations. The doctor hummed as he worked and then listened to his heart with the stethoscope before clearing a section of his arm of gauze so he could take his blood pressure. Cano winced as the cuff tightened and the man eyed his watch, and then he was finished and removing it.

  “Still low. Ninety over fifty-six. But that should come up as you rehydrate and get more calories into you.” He set the cuff down and studied Cano. “You’re healing relatively quickly. You have a strong constitution.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “They brought you in a little over a day ago. So the injuries are two days old.”

  “How long till I can move?”

  “Probably not for another three or so, at least. Got to allow your wounds time to heal. Your head is another matter. No way of knowing how long that will take. Could be a matter of days or weeks.”

  “I don’t have weeks.”

  The doctor frowned. “You don’t have a choice. Your body will do whatever it’s going to do. Best for you to stay out of its way and let it.”

  They were interrupted by Luis barging into the room, two-way in hand. “You said he’s awake?” he asked the doctor, and then looked down at Cano. “Oh. Good.”

  “What happened?” Cano demanded.

  “Grenade.”

  “I guessed that.”

  “We lost all the men except for myself and two others.”

  “Damn. And the woman?”

  “Never saw anything but muzzle flashes and grenade blasts.”

  “Did you go back out?”

  Luis scowled. “I’m about out of men, and yours won’t listen to me. It’s all I can do to maintain order over the town with the people I have.”

  “So she’s gone,” Cano said, disgusted.

  “For now.”

  Cano closed his eye, exhausted, and took a deep, painful breath. The doctor and Luis exchanged a look, and Luis nodded.

  “I’ll leave you to rest. Glad to see you’re going to make it,” Luis said, and walked out of the room.

  The doctor pulled up a chair with a sigh. “Let’s try the juice.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any morphine?”

  “Sorry.”

  Cano opened his eye. “Whiskey?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Can’t. Thins your blood.” He held out the thermos. “Can’t give you aspirin for the same reason. But the pain should recede in another day or two.”

  “Great.”

  “At least you’re alive.”

  Cano closed his eye again and exhaled forcefully. “For now.”

  Chapter 30

  “Damn.”

  Ruby’s voice woke Lucas. He rolled over on the couch and peered at her by Bruce’s computer station.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The system crashed at some point last night.”

  “Great.”

  She tried to reboot the computer, but nothing lit up. Ruby fiddled with the plug and checked the surge protector. She glanced up at Lucas and shook her head. “Deader than Jim Morrison.”

  “Who?”

  “I forgot. Before your time.”

  He stretched. “So, nothing?”

  She held up a USB drive. “I had it auto-save the results every hour to this dongle, just in case. So the record should be on here.” Ruby plugged the small device into the laptop’s port and opened a folder on the screen. Lucas moved to her side and checked his watch.

  “You’re up early.”

  “You know the saying about worms.”

  He smiled. “Doesn’t work so well if you’re the worm.”

  “Nobody tells them anything.” She tapped a command and then scanned a readout of possible decryptions of the character string. It didn’t take long. “Well, that amounted to a big bag of fresh squat.”

  “So what now?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Lucas. I put everything I could think of into the program. If it isn’t a substitution cypher, I’m out of ammo.”

  “You don’t have a plan B?” he asked incredulously.

  “I’m not a code cracker, Lucas. I’m a programmer who’s g
ood at writing software, but that only translates so far. I’m not Mata Hari. A code that’s something other than replacing one letter with another, or every third or fourth letter with another, can take months or even years to crack. Without knowing the basis of the string, all we can do is look for patterns. The program didn’t find anything intelligible.”

  “You sounded pretty confident last night,” he observed.

  “Looks like I was wrong.”

  The door opened and Sierra stepped out, eyes puffy from sleep. “Did you decrypt it?” she asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “Blew up the computer.”

  Ruby swatted his arm. “No, it didn’t. I mean, technically, it might have overheated or something, but that’s not the code’s fault. This system’s old.”

  “Well, can’t you use the other one?” Sierra asked.

  “No point. The results are in, and they’re gibberish.”

  Sierra gaped at Ruby, her mouth hanging open, while Lucas walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Think this water’s safe to drink?”

  Bruce’s voice rang out from his bedroom doorway. “Of course it is. What’s all this about blowing up my CPU?”

  Ruby glanced at Bruce. “System failed. I can’t get it to restart.”

  “Crap,” he said, moving across the room and kneeling down to study the box. He fiddled with it for a few moments and then retrieved a screwdriver from a coffee mug filled with tools and opened the back. Ruby watched as Lucas poured himself a glass of water and drained it.

  Sierra walked to the door. “I need some fresh air,” she said, and slid the bolt wide. She stepped outside, and Lucas followed her out, leaving the tech gurus to figure out what had gone wrong. Sierra sat on a collapsible lawn chair and Lucas took the seat beside her. She looked over at him and he found himself unexpectedly lost in her eyes, a thrill running through him like a live wire. “We’re screwed,” she said, obviously unaware of the effect she was having on him, and the moment passed.

  Lucas nodded, his face giving nothing away. “Seems that way. Maybe she can pull a rabbit out of her hat, though. Never know.”

  “She didn’t sound positive.”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn.”

  “Sometimes that’s how it goes.”

  “We have to do something.”

  He eyed her. “Like what?”

  “I was thinking. One man knows how to get in touch with Shangri-La. He may still be alive. If he is, he’s our only hope of reaching them. He could set up another rendezvous.”

  Lucas shook his head. “The scientist in Lubbock? I thought you said he was probably dead.”

  “I said he might be. But I don’t know that. I was just guessing that they might have figured out he helped us.”

  “Was there any evidence linking him to you?”

  “Not really.”

  His tone hardened. “That’s not the same as ‘no.’ It’s a pretty straightforward issue. Either there was, or there wasn’t.”

  “I…I don’t know whether anyone knew we had a thing. If not, then there’d be no reason to think he was involved.” She hesitated. “We kept it secret, so unless he told someone, he might be fine.”

  “Might. Kinda like might not.”

  “If he was planning to help us, it doesn’t make any sense he’d advertise the connection, does it?”

  “You’re the one who thought he’d be dead.”

  “I was just being pessimistic. I honestly have no idea.”

  Lucas sighed. “What are you saying, Sierra?”

  “We need to return to Lubbock. Find him, if he’s still alive. Get him to help us again.”

  “Take Eve back into the heart of enemy territory and risk handing the devil the fate of the world, you mean?”

  “There has to be a way, Lucas.”

  He thought for several moments. “There is, and we both know it. If I go, nobody knows me. I could find him, assuming he’s alive, and deliver the message. Set up a meet somewhere.” He remembered Ruby’s admonishment about Sierra’s manipulative talents, and part of him understood what she was doing – but there really was no other way he could see if they were to find the sanctuary, given that Ruby was out of gas and Bruce’s talents seemed better suited to rolling joints than decoding cyphers. “Tell me everything you know about him.”

  “We…we had a fling. He was lonely, and so was I. We were both stuck in a horrible situation, against our will, and…he’s a good man.”

  Lucas studied her face as though looking for a lost puzzle piece. “Would he be easy for them to replace?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I mean, he was a specialist, so probably not.”

  “He’s the one who got in touch with Shangri-La? Directly?”

  She shook her head. “Through someone else. He just told me it was a rebel group.”

  “He was the conduit.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I suppose.” She studied her feet. “The research facility is heavily guarded, but the staff quarters across the street aren’t. If you could get into those, it’s doable. You could find him and talk to him.”

  “What’s his name? How would I recognize him?”

  “His name’s Jacob. Thirties, black short hair, glasses, a little shorter than you. He looks like a teacher or something. But there aren’t a lot like him at the facility. Most of the staff are…like me.”

  “Tell me about the security. Everything you can.”

  “It’s a big place. The University Medical Center. They have a wing set up where all they do is work on this project. There are guards at all the entrances and roving security that do spot checks during the day. I imagine they’ve tightened things up since we escaped, too.”

  “Why?”

  She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? Because we escaped!”

  “Are they holding anyone else?”

  “Well. Oh. I see what you mean.”

  Lucas thought for a moment. “So that’s where he is during the day. Tell me about the staff housing.”

  “It’s adjacent to the Medical Center, across the main boulevard to the north. They used to be apartments, but are now set up as living accommodations for the high-level workers.”

  “Guards?”

  “A couple. Not nearly as many as at the main campus.”

  “Can you draw me a diagram of the layout?”

  “Sure.” She paused. “You’re really thinking of doing this?”

  “Barring a miracle, I don’t see any other option, do you?”

  “I could go. You could stay here with Eve.”

  He made a face. “Not very practical, considering they know what you look like and have the whole state on the lookout for you.”

  “I just hate that you have to put yourself at risk again. For us.”

  “Beats sitting around here watching Ruby spin her wheels.”

  Sierra reached out and placed her hand over his. “You’re a remarkable man, Lucas. I…I wish we had more time to get to know each other. We need to make some when you get back.”

  Neither of them said anything, and then the door opened and Eve burst through. “Auntie Sierra! I had a bad dream. You were gone,” she said. Sierra stood and hugged the little girl, and Lucas also rose.

  “Sooner you draw that for me, sooner I can be on the trail,” he said.

  He went back inside to find Bruce shaking his head, hands on his hips, a look of frustration on his face. “I don’t know. I think it’s the power supply,” he said. “I can scrounge around and see if I can find another one – a lot of the homes here are abandoned, and nobody’s got any use for computers with no Internet or electricity. But this is the second one that’s blown, so it’s a long shot.”

  Lucas interrupted him. “How far is Lubbock from here?”

  Bruce frowned. “Oh, I know that. It’s…about a hundred and sixty miles.”

  Lucas’s expression matched his. “Three hard days, if no problems.”

  Sierra came in with Eve and sat
down at the small dining room table, a cheap glass and wood affair, the top chipped from hard use.

  “Morning, Bruce. You have any paper? And a pencil or pen?”

  He looked confused by the question. “Um, sure. Why?”

  “I could use a couple of sheets.”

  He brought her a notebook. “Go ahead and take whatever you need,” he said, handing her a pencil. She thought for a long moment and then began drawing a series of lines, connecting them into a rough blueprint.

  “Damn,” she said after five minutes, and tore the page out and started over. Lucas watched her wordlessly. The next time she got it to her satisfaction and nodded. She carefully removed it from the notebook and handed it to Lucas. “That’s the overview. I put an X where Jacob’s room is, or at least used to be, and a G where the guards were stationed.”

  “That’s good,” Lucas said, considering the drawing before folding it and slipping it into his back pocket. He glanced at Bruce. “Your shower work?”

  “I told you. Pressure tank. And a solar heater,” Bruce said with pride.

  “Think I’ll go freshen up before I hit the trail.”

  “The trail?” Ruby asked.

  Lucas didn’t comment, just made his way to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Ruby fixed Sierra with an expression that could have frozen fire. “What did you talk him into?”

  “Me? Nothing,” she protested. “You should know by now you can’t talk him into anything he doesn’t want to do.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  Sierra shook her head and looked at Bruce before returning the older woman’s stare with equivalent intensity. “That’s not for me to say. If Lucas wants to tell you, he will.”

  Ruby got the message – no discussion in front of Bruce. She grudgingly backed down and busied herself with preparing breakfast. Bruce came into the kitchen and watched her beat some eggs.

  “I forgot how nice it is to have someone around who knows how to cook,” he said.

  “If you don’t watch out, you may have us for a while.”