The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels)

by Russell Blake

  “Doesn’t work like that. More than half the work is finding the right stuff. I explained that up front.”

  “Getting mighty tired of doin’ without power, Bruce,” the man in the middle said. “Maybe you should give us your panels and see how you like it for a while.”

  “Yeah,” Wesley agreed. “Why don’t we do that and see how it sits? Even trade. Our busted ones for your workin’ ones.”

  “Guys, come on. I can’t repair your stuff without power,” Bruce countered.

  “Don’t much matter if we got yours,” Hank observed. “I’m likin’ that idea a whole bunch.”

  Bruce’s voice hardened. “It’ll be another week. Sorry, guys, but that’s the best I can do. I can’t materialize parts out of thin air. Be reasonable.”

  “Then how about you give us back all the ammo we traded you, and we take our panels and find someone else?”

  “There is nobody else. You know that.”

  Tom elbowed Wesley, an ugly expression twisting his meaty features. “Betcha he don’t have the ammo, either.”

  Wesley took a step closer. “Think we want our ammo back, Bruce. Now.”

  “I had to trade most of it to get wire for your inverter. The other stuff was fried, shorting out all over the place. Sun had baked the insulation – that was a part of your problem.”

  “Told you,” Tom said. “I knew it. Bastard robbed us, and now he’s tryin’ to stall.”

  The men freed their weapons and held them loosely in their hands, the message more than clear. Bruce’s face blanched and he shook his head.

  “No need for that, gentlemen. I’m good for it. But don’t you really just want your stuff fixed rather than your ammo?”

  “Nah. We want your array. Fair’s fair, you friggin’ pothead,” Hank growled. “Don’t think we haven’t seen you lyin’ around here stoned instead of workin’. Makes me sick thinkin’ ’bout it. You think you can screw us and get away with it? That what you think?”

  “Nobody’s screwing anyone, Hank. There was a slight delay. That’s all.”

  “You told us less than a week originally.”

  “You mean when you came here begging me to help? Told me to bump my other jobs and you’d make it worth my while? Is that when I told you?” Bruce countered.

  “Damned fools to think you would,” Tom snapped.

  “Look. You can’t have my array. That was never part of the deal. I told you I’d repair yours and gave you an estimate of how long I thought it would take. It’s running longer than I’d hoped. For which I apologize, but I can’t change that or find parts before I find them. You can threaten all you want, but it’s not going to get the job done any faster.”

  Wesley’s face flushed with color and he raised the barrel of his gun. “Playin’ with fire, boy.”

  The side window slid open and the snout of an AK-47 appeared. Ruby’s voice rang out from behind the thin gauze curtains.

  “There a problem, Bruce?”

  Bruce eyed the men and tried not to smile. “No, I don’t think so. Is there, boys?”

  Wesley looked like he’d been kicked in the balls. “Why, I oughta–”

  “You oughta get out of here and let me work before you discover you aren’t bulletproof, boys,” Bruce warned. “I’ve been pretty civil, but I don’t appreciate the bully tactics, and if you think you’re going to draw down on me while on my property, ask yourself how you’d react if someone did the same to you.” Bruce let that sink in. “Now I’m going to repair your gear and get it back to you as fast as possible. The alternative is I can give you back the panels and inverter, and I’ll scrounge up some ammo in a day or so. But you’re not going to threaten me, and you’re not taking my array – or you’re going to have some serious problems, and the town will back me for defending myself. We both know that.”

  “You’re makin’ the mistake of your life, punk,” Hank spat.

  “Gentlemen, I’d suggest you get on home before my friend here gets nervous. An AK on full auto can be touchy. You don’t want nervous fingers on the trigger. Hate for an accident to happen, so lower your guns, move off my property, and come back in a week.”

  Wesley did as instructed, clearly not prepared to be staring down the barrel at death that morning. The other two men followed his lead and shouldered their guns as they backed away.

  “You best sleep with one eye open. You ain’t the only one can have accidents around here,” Hank warned. As they turned and trudged off, Bruce’s eyes seared holes in the backs of their jackets.

  When the men had disappeared, Bruce resumed breathing and closed and locked the trailer door. He glanced at Ruby and nodded his head to her. “I didn’t realize what customer service talent you had. You’ve been wasting yourself on computers.”

  “Seemed like you could use a hand there.”

  “Yeah, welcome to my world. It’s been getting worse. Everyone wants it now, or sooner, and they don’t care about the details.” He exhaled slowly. “Anyway, thanks.”

  “Think they were serious about coming back at night?”

  “Nah. That was bluster. There’s still nobody else who can repair their crap.”

  “Sounded awful convincing. Hate for one of them to get drunk and put a few rounds through the side of this tin can. Not with Eve around.”

  “They won’t.”

  Ruby looked at him skeptically. “You one hundred percent sure?”

  “Do I smell eggs?”

  She shook her head and closed the window. “Don’t get us into any more trouble than we’re already in, Bruce. Just promise me that.”

  “Might have to carry your luggage for you if things keep going this way,” Bruce conceded. “Neighborhood’s turning chillier by the minute.”

  “Lucas will be back in a few days. That’s all we need.”

  “Then that’s what you shall receive. Now let’s get some of those eggs cooked so I can keep my strength up. I’m hungry as a horse.”

  “You should cut back on the loco weed. I hear that’s hell on the appetite.”

  Bruce ignored her barb and strode to his room. “Call me when it’s ready. I need to go empty my pants now.”

  Ruby couldn’t help but grin. “I’ll bet.”

  Chapter 40

  Jacob stood shivering in a lower-floor room of the hospital in spite of the warm temperature, stripped naked and hanging from an eyelet in the ceiling by his bound wrists, his feet barely touching the floor. His left calf had cramped several times, adding to his discomfort, and the complete darkness in the dank chamber further isolated him and increased the sense of surrealism of the experience.

  He’d always known this day might come, but all the intellectualizing hadn’t prepared him for the grim reality. The guards had marched him to the hospital and led him downstairs, and then gone to work on him with their fists until he’d lost consciousness. When he’d come to, he’d been in his present state, his jaw and cheekbones throbbing from the beating, one eye swollen partially shut, and a trickle of blood drying beneath his broken nose.

  He inhaled through his mouth, every breath a gasp that sent lances of pain shooting through his chest from several broken ribs. He tried to imagine the bones splintered, the ragged edge of one puncturing an organ, the hemorrhaging causing him to black out a final time and sparing him the ordeal he knew was to come, but he knew he wasn’t fatally injured – the Crew thugs had seen to that.

  For Magnus’s men to have beaten him, Eddie had to have given him up – there was no other way they would jeopardize the vaccine effort to the extent that Jacob’s demise would cause. True, he had subordinates who knew how to make the antibiotics and other products they manufactured, but the vaccine held its own complexities. The virus’s composition and penchant for mutation was unlike any he’d seen before, its genesis unknown other than its startling resemblance to Spanish flu.

  That he would be replaced was obvious, but it would mean significant delays as the new director came up to speed, checked all prior wo
rk, and familiarized himself with the failed attempts they’d made and the leaps in understanding that had resulted. Jacob had deliberately stalled the project at every turn, knowing there was nobody watching over his shoulder capable of catching the subtle sabotage. That would change when his replacement came in, and would bring Magnus closer to being able to generate an effective vaccine – an eventuality that Jacob and Eddie had risked their lives to prevent.

  The Crew guards had demanded to know what the broadcast meant as they’d beaten Jacob bloody. They went about their work with detached determination, taking care to deliver blows that would cause maximum pain without endangering his life. They’d promised to break his fingers and toes on the next round, and to cut his ears, nose, and more sensitive appendage off should he fail to tell them what he knew, but Jacob had resolved to continue pleading ignorance right up until the time he expired.

  That he would die was a foregone conclusion. After spending five years under Crew rule, he had no doubt about that. He was far too familiar with their tactics to believe any promises of mercy – if he did tell them anything, they would simply increase the damage to him in order to see if he changed his story.

  A door opened and the room flooded with fluorescent light. He blinked at the unexpected glare, and then his eyes focused on a small form lying in the corner in a fetal position, orange jumpsuit and white hair as distinctive as a fingerprint. Eddie’s eyes were frozen wide in death, his face gray and his mouth open in an expression of pained surprise. Jacob could make out his tongue, cyanotic and swollen, and looked away, the image an indecent violation of his friend’s eternal rest.

  A man entered and Jacob’s heart sank. He recognized Kyle, one of Magnus’s especially mean-spirited lieutenants, and braced himself for what was to come. To Jacob’s surprise, the door remained open, and Kyle approached until he was only a few feet from Jacob – close enough for the scientist to make out a thin sheen of sweat on the network of tattoos that covered his face and head, the iconic Eye of Providence in the center of his forehead exactly like that of his master’s.

  “Well, well. Seems you and your little friend have been very naughty boys, Doctor,” Kyle hissed, his voice raspy from an injury to his voice box in some prison fight. “Funny that we should find ourselves like this, isn’t it?”

  Jacob had made no secret of how much he despised the man, and he now regretted his hubris. Kyle would take special delight in making Jacob’s final hours the most agonizing of his life, he knew.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jacob managed between broken teeth and mangled lips.

  “Oh, let’s not pretend. Your buddy there told us enough before he died. Little turd had a heart attack early on, but before he did, he confessed that you were his partner in crime. He told us it was he who made the broadcast we intercepted, and he told us what it meant. We need you to confirm he told us the truth.”

  “You believed him? He hated me. Hated all the staff.”

  Kyle smiled. “I don’t think so. He was very convincing, and my experience with those about to go to their graves is that they tend to find honesty in their last words.”

  “He tricked you, and now he’s gotten what he wanted, obviously – to get rid of your lead scientist. Not very smart, are you? He played you, and you fell for it.”

  Kyle sighed, as though fatigued. “You’re very good. Really, you are. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe you.”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “I’ll save us all a little time, Doctor. I intend to hurt you in ways you never thought possible. I’m talking Biblical, Inquisition-level shit. You’ll be drowning in your own blood, begging for death by the time I’m done with you. But I’m in a hurry, so I’m going to give you a choice: a quick death or the drawn-out version.”

  “Have you spoken with Whitely? There’s no way he’d allow me to be taken out of the game. We’re too close to a vaccine.”

  “Whitely doesn’t matter. Magnus ordered it. You know what that means.”

  Jacob’s heart skipped. He did indeed know what it meant: there was no possibility of relief.

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he tried.

  “I guess we’re going to do this the hard way. That’s fine.” Kyle turned to the open door. “Bring in the stuff.”

  Two guards wheeled in a rolling mechanic’s table with an array of nightmare tools on it – wire cutters, saws, vices, surgical instruments. Kyle smiled at the sight of Jacob’s face and reached to select a thin, twelve-inch-long glass rod.

  “You have no idea what this is going to feel like,” he said, eyeing Jacob’s genitals. “The hammer blow that shatters it inside you will feel like an angel’s kiss compared to what follows. You really don’t want to experience it, or so I’ve gathered from watching tougher men than you cry like baby kittens by the time I’m done.”

  “I swear I have no idea what you want to know. You’re making the mistake of your life. You’ll never get the vaccine if you kill me, and Magnus will ultimately blame you for carrying out his orders. You know how that will work. You’ll be on the receiving end before you know it.”

  Kyle studied the glass rod like it held the answer to a mystery, and then sighed again. “I was afraid of that.”

  “What?”

  “You’re ready to endure anything, aren’t you?”

  “You’re mistaking not knowing anything with something else.”

  Kyle nodded once. “I was right. I told them it wouldn’t work.”

  Jacob felt a tremble of relief. Maybe he’d managed to save himself…?

  “Don’t do this,” he whispered.

  Kyle snapped his fingers and called to the doorway. “Bring her in.”

  Two guards half-dragged a woman into the room, her eyes terrified. She screamed when she saw Jacob and dropped to her knees sobbing when the guards released her.

  “Sarah!” Jacob screamed in a tortured voice.

  “That’s right, smart guy,” Kyle snarled. “Your sister. You’re obviously willing to undergo just about anything, but let’s see how you feel about subjecting your sister to the punishment intended for you.”

  “She’s innocent,” Jacob protested. Sarah was a technician at the Dallas facility. They must have run her over in a vehicle, using some of their precious fuel, to get her to Lubbock that quickly.

  “Of course she is. That’s the whole point. We’ll see how your convictions hold up when she’s raped repeatedly in front of you – while you know you’re responsible for her misery and could save her at any time. Sodomy, rape, a good enthusiastic beating, and then we’ll start carving her face.” Kyle gave him a cold smirk. “You really want that?”

  Jacob closed his eyes, willing himself dead. It was an impossible choice. Sell out and condemn his species to an existence of living hell under the rule of a demon; or betray his sister and watch her violated and tortured.

  “You can’t do this,” he screamed, choking on the last word.

  “Oh, Jacob, of course I can. And you will eventually tell me what I want to know. The only question is how much you’re willing to allow to happen to your flesh and blood before you do.”

  Kyle raised an eyebrow and offered the grin of an unrepentant sadist. Jacob believed him. He would follow through, probably was aroused at the thought of the horror he was going to perpetrate, and was hoping Jacob would refuse to tell him what he asked.

  “If I tell you, you’ll let her go?”

  Kyle nodded. “You have my word.”

  “How do I know I can believe you?”

  “You don’t. Makes it more fun, don’t you think?”

  Jacob took a deep breath. “The broadcast was arranging a rendezvous,” he began.

  An hour later he was gagging on his own vomit after watching his sister systematically ruined, the lump of bleeding, burned flesh quivering on the floor in front of him unrecognizable as human.

  Kyle closed the door behind him as Jacob’s strangled shriek reverberated off the wal
ls, the rod broken. The real amusement was only about to begin.

  Chapter 41

  Lucas watered Tango from one of the plastic bottles, his eyes on the distant intersection of the sky with the plain, watching for any evidence of pursuit. He’d ridden from Lubbock and hadn’t stopped until noon other than to allow Tango to rest and to take an occasional bearing. Now, as the heat rose, he debated snatching a few hours of sleep – he’d established sufficient lead and had left no trail to follow, so he was confident that nobody was tailing him.

  He could go only so long without slumber, though, and then his senses would begin playing tricks on him. He’d miss some critical tell or, worse, misinterpret or invent one, which could be disastrous. And Tango, for all his fortitude, wasn’t a machine; pushed too hard, he would eventually misstep and hurt himself, which would leave them dead in the water.

  Lucas spotted the remains of a maintenance building at the edge of one of the oil fields and led Tango to it on foot. The interior was in ruins, but there was shade to rest in and sufficient grass for the horse to feed. Lucas could see endless green stretching in all directions, so he’d be able to spot any riders from far away – although he hadn’t spied a single one all day and, given the heat and absence of any nearby destinations, didn’t expect to.

  He decided to risk it and unfurled his bedroll and lay down inside the building after setting Tango loose to graze. He closed his eyes and was asleep within moments, his body in desperate need of recharging.

  Lucas awoke to Tango nudging him with his nose. He rolled over and peered at the time, and then sat up. He’d been asleep for four hours – two longer than he’d planned. He swore at his carelessness as he rolled up his bedroll and, after setting his hat on his head, exited the building. A study of the horizon to the east with his binoculars revealed nothing new, and he relaxed a bit as he swept the remainder of the area, pivoting in a slow circle until he’d scanned everything.

  He mounted up and Tango strode forward; the much-needed respite had done them both good. Lucas resolved to keep moving after dark to make up the time, the first twenty-four hours the most critical.