The Day After Never (Book 2): Purgatory Road

by Russell Blake

  Ruby watched him wordlessly, trying to keep any antagonism out of her stance, wary of drawing their ire – something Sierra would be well advised to figure out before she got backhanded, or worse. Sierra, as though reading her mind, looked over at her, and Ruby gave her a blank stare, hoping she’d get the message. She appeared to, because she gave a small nod and then returned to eyeing the men with a neutral expression, her anger spent now that the reality of their capture had sunk in.

  “Okay. Skeet, you ride caboose on ’em. Either one tries to ride off, shoot the brat,” Billy said. He dug his heels into his horse’s flank, urging him up the bank and onto the trail that continued south toward a connecting road that ultimately spilled onto the Pecos highway.

  Chapter 18

  Lucas stopped at the shallow stretch of the Black River that immediately preceded the spill from the spring and listened intently as Tango filled up on water in the cool shade. It had taken him longer than he’d hoped, but he’d heard nothing of the dogs on his journey, so he was sure they were still well behind him. He rolled his head to loosen his taut neck muscles and ran a hand over the heavy stubble on his face – a reminder to himself that he needed a shave. He thought of his straight razor that his grandfather had given him on his eighteenth birthday, a rite of passage memento that still caused a lump to form in his throat whenever he used it.

  The old man had been crusty and hardheaded, but he’d also had the unique sort of deep compassion that only those in touch with the land displayed – a kind of holistic ease with his surroundings that allowed him to empathize at a greater level than city dwellers. He’d appreciated the circle of life from raising and butchering his own animals and had taught Lucas the same lessons. The bond Lucas had with Tango was a perfect example – the two were connected in a way that was difficult to describe, but as real as anything in his life. The big horse seemed to be able to read Lucas’s mind in a way that shocked him sometimes, and part of the stallion’s willingness to push himself beyond any reasonable limits of endurance was a testament to that connection.

  “Okay. We’re almost done. Only a little more to go,” Lucas said, and then his attention was drawn to three buzzards circling to the north, high in a turquoise morning sky so bright it seemed artificial. “Bad night for something,” he whispered, “or someone.” He led Tango from the water with a gentle tug at the reins, anxious to reunite with Ruby and show her the note.

  When he arrived at the bridge, he immediately sensed that something was off. The atmosphere was tense, as though the balance of the area had been knocked off kilter, and his hand moved to the stock of the M4 as he slid the sling from his shoulder. Gun in hand, he switched the fire selector switch to three-round burst mode and lowered himself from the saddle.

  The fire pit stones were still encircled, and a lazy coil of smoke rose from the ashes in the center. The spines of two bass told him that the women arrived with sufficient time to catch the fish, cook, and eat. But the fire was dying, so they couldn’t have gone far. He tried to imagine why they would have come to the springs as agreed and then suddenly left, and his imagination came up with nothing good.

  The sentiment worsened when he saw the trail that led south. He knelt to study the tracks, his eyes flat beneath the brim of his hat. A lot of riders, but judging by the spacing of the distinctive prints of one horse with a mangled horseshoe, moving slowly.

  Lucas didn’t need any more data to fill in the blanks. There were plenty of vermin roaming the wastelands, and three females on their own would have been too tempting to resist. He’d heard no shooting, so they’d been taken by surprise, likely exhausted after an all-night ride. He didn’t have to struggle to imagine just how tired, as his own muscles were sore from the trek – and he was accustomed to days in the saddle and had a better mount.

  His gaze swept the clearing, searching for any other clues before he went after them. Unfortunately, the gravel riverbank left no footprints, so he was left with only the fire and the trail and his experience with the region’s miscreants to connect the remainder of the dots.

  There was no blood on the stones, which was a positive. And whatever lead the group had on him would be trivial – the fire told him that much.

  So it would be a matter of tracking whoever had grabbed them and dealing with them without the females getting hurt in the process. A tall order, given that he was only one man on a tired horse, who hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours.

  But if there was a way, he would find it. He hadn’t traveled as far as he had only to lose his charges to some roving gang.

  That it wasn’t the cartel was obvious to him. There was no physical way they could have made it ahead of him since they had no idea where they were going. So at least it wasn’t the Locos – not that any of the alternatives were much better. Raiders, scavengers, criminal gangs, the desperate and the sadistic…

  You could never let your guard down. That was the lesson he’d learned over and over again: expect the worst, prepare for it, and if you feel safe, you’re probably in danger of being killed.

  “Sorry, Tango. I lied,” Lucas said. Tango took another bite of grass and gave Lucas a long-suffering look, as though he’d already pieced together that any rest he’d gotten was short-lived. “Let’s hit the road, buddy.”

  Lucas led the horse to the track and continued to walk beside him, reasoning that the poor beast had done more than his share over the last day and a half. It would do Lucas good to stretch his legs, as well as make it easier to note any discrepancies on the trail.

  He’d ridden this one before on his jaunts into the foothills following herds of mustangs, and knew its twists and turns relatively well. Depending on how far ahead they were, he might be able to get past them and find an opportune area to lie in wait. There were several spots that could work, but first he needed to get a look at what he was dealing with.

  The other complication was that the moment he started shooting, the cartel would be alerted and come at a gallop. Ten miles might have been a lot of distance stumbling around in the dark toward an unknown destination, but once they heard shots, they’d home in on the source like attack dogs, and then any meager advantage Lucas possessed would be finished – and it would be a bloodbath. Lucas wasn’t anxious to invite that, and if it was possible to handle his current problem more tactfully, he would.

  He checked the time and sighed. The sun had only been up for a couple of hours, and the day had already turned completely to crap.

  Chapter 19

  The scrub along the side of the trail turned from green to beige as it meandered further from the river, and the soil transitioned from hard-packed clay to loose dirt. Lucas had mounted Tango after walking for nearly half an hour and peered through his binoculars every few minutes in the hopes of seeing dust. That he hadn’t told him that he had either badly misjudged the timing of the women’s departure, or the group was moving at a walk and being careful not to leave any evidence of their passage.

  The latter was the most likely, but also implied a more difficult target for him. He preferred reckless amateurs like the Raiders if he was going to have to do battle. Stealthy riders savvy enough to take precautions bode poorly for his chances of getting the drop on them – they’d be paranoid as their normal state, which would make his job more difficult.

  Lucas rounded a bend and spied several doves rising over the brush no more than a quarter mile ahead of him. He stopped Tango and swept the area with his binoculars, and caught a faint beige tint to the sky just above the horizon – the telltale dust that a decent-sized party would be unable to completely avoid no matter how careful they were.

  Half a mile away, he guessed. No more.

  He recognized the area and eyed a rock monolith to his right that had been carved from the earth by millennia of flash floods. If they stuck to the path, they would pass through a dried riverbed framed by dense vegetation – perfect for his purposes. Lucas could see it in his mind’s eye and nodded. Depending on the size of the par
ty, it could be enough.

  Keeping the attack surgical would be the challenge. He weighed the benefit of trying to get closer to assess the strength of the group and decided it was worth the risk. There was no point attempting to take on a force he couldn’t overcome without jeopardizing the women.

  Lucas urged Tango toward the landmark and cut to the east, sticking to brush in order to avoid stirring up any dust. It made for harder going for the stallion, but there was no choice if he wanted to avoid detection. His mind worked furiously as he rode, trying to figure out how to avoid drawing the cartel to their position once the shooting started, but he couldn’t see any way around it. Which meant that the best he could do with an exhausted horse and the women in tow, assuming he was successful in freeing them, would be to choose the location of the confrontation.

  When he had flanked the group, he cut back, sticking to the east so the sun would be at his back, knowing from years riding that the natural inclination was to avoid staring in the direction of its glare. He hoped that between the element of surprise and his orientation, he could avoid detection and size up his adversaries.

  He lowered himself from the saddle and brought the spyglasses into play, and found the trail. A quick survey told him that they hadn’t passed yet, so he’d been successful in the first part of his ambition.

  Five minutes went by with the only sound the buzzing of a persistent fly around his face, and then he saw the first riders come around the bend. He counted heads and exhaled in relief when he spied eight. Sierra and Eve were near the end of the ragged procession, and Ruby and a gunman brought up the rear.

  The men looked filthy and half starved; their clothing was little more than rags, their hats tattered and stained, their skin burnished the color of pecans by constant exposure to the elements, and every inch of them coated in trail dust and grime. Yet for their appearance, they rode in an orderly fashion and showed sufficient field know-how to keep a low profile. Their horses were as thin as they were, ribs jutting through their hides like washboards, but had the easy gait of animals who’d spent their existence on the road – unlike the domesticated creatures of the pre-collapse world, most horses still alive were working mounts expected to go until they dropped.

  Three of the men wore plate carriers, but like their clothes, their gear looked worn and frayed. Still, Lucas would have to shoot around the body armor if he was to make each shot count.

  The outline of a plan began to form. There were a few relics of utility buildings ahead on the trail where he could fire from cover as they neared, leaving them out in the open with no place to hide. The challenge would be to avoid hitting the women, which would require precision shots rather than bursts from the M4.

  Eight riders, eight bullets, if he did this correctly. The Remington’s superior range over the hardware the gunmen were toting would be his edge once the shooting started. The scope was still set at seven hundred yards, at which distance he would be deadly while they would be ineffective.

  It could work.

  He returned to Tango, removed the Remington, and dialed back the adjustments to what he reckoned was six hundred yards, which would be more than sufficient edge, given the AKs and ARs he’d seen. The trick would be to maintain a disciplined pace as the gunmen scrambled for nonexistent cover.

  He would keep the M4 ready for when a few inevitably closed in. There was a limit to how long they’d take his fire and watch each other fall before desperation made them rush him, thinking he only had a single-shot weapon.

  Lucas drove Tango through the brush until he reached the buildings, tied the horse out of sight in the shade of one, and set up in the other. He placed several magazines for the Remington by his side, along with six spares for the M4 for when it got sloppy.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  The first riders came into view, and Lucas held his fire until the final man was in his crosshairs. Because he was moving so slowly, that would be the easiest shot. Lucas took his time, watching the gentle sway from the horse’s stride, and then caressed the trigger with even pressure.

  The gun bucked against his shoulder and he watched a ruby blossom appear on the left side of the rider’s chest. Lucas was already twisting the adjustment one notch to correct for the breeze that had caused the drift, and then worked the bolt and chambered another cartridge as the column disintegrated into a confusion of panicked horses and startled men.

  His second shot drilled the rider next in line from the women, this time dead center of his chest, high in the sternum. He flew back off his horse as it bolted, and it dragged him by one leg as it ran for the hills. Lucas worked the bolt again with calm deliberation, his gaze through the scope unwavering. As he’d hoped, the remaining six gunmen were disorganized, two of them trying to ride into the nearly impenetrable brush in order to evade his shots, the other four dropping from their horses and opening fire at the building with ineffective fury.

  Another of his rounds caught a rider in the back, and he fell. The gunman was one who was wearing a plate carrier, but Lucas had fired low, calculating that the body armor wouldn’t reach his lower spine, given its fit. Lucas didn’t dwell on the downed rider, but switched to the remaining man, who was struggling through clumps of prickly pear, his horse all but stopped by the natural barrier.

  His attention was drawn momentarily to Ruby and Sierra; they’d wisely remained on their mounts, who’d turned tail and run in the opposite direction from the shooting. Every step took them further out of harm’s way, and he returned his focus back to the rider.

  A few slugs thudded into the cement wall to his right as Lucas pulled the trigger again. The shot missed, and Lucas swore and reloaded as more rounds found the building. So the ragtag scavengers had found the range even with their limited-accuracy weapons, which presaged a final rush, he was sure. He fired at the horseman, and this time was rewarded with an explosion of blood from the man’s torso and a scream that split the air like the cry of a wounded calf. More rounds thudded into the building and one ricocheted off the wall behind him; it was only a lucky stray that had entered the window, but still potentially deadly if his good fortune ran dry.

  He switched magazines and loaded another round, his ears ringing from the long gun’s report. The surviving shooters were on the ground, presenting smaller targets but stationary ones, which made all the difference to Lucas. His next shot vaporized the top of the nearest man’s skull, and the gunman slumped over his weapon.

  That acted as the catalyst for the charge Lucas had been expecting. The men fired and screamed like it was a Civil War reenactment as they ran toward the building – a classically amateur suicide run that worked no better in present-day combat than it had in the old days. Lucas set the Remington aside and held his fire until the men were three hundred yards from him, their magazines emptied, creating a lull in the onslaught. They jettisoned the spent ones as Lucas peeked over the bottom of the window with his M4, and then he was firing three-round bursts, cutting the men down without mercy.

  It was over in less than ten seconds, even those with flak vests terminally wounded or dead once their body armor failed. Lucas waited until he was sure nobody was in any shape for a final bite at the apple and stepped through the building entrance, M4 pointed at the downed men.

  Lucas was halfway to them when a burst of automatic fire coughed from his right, and he dove for cover. One of the riders still had some fight in him – probably the one hit in the lower back, he thought grimly. The rounds missed Lucas by a fair margin, but still, the snap of incoming bullets shredding the air by his head was a sensation he’d never get used to. He waited for another salvo and, when it came, returned fire, burst after burst as he drove himself to his feet and ran for the dead shooters, intent on using their bodies for cover.

  Another volley echoed through the brush as he threw himself amid the downed men and got a fix on the shooter’s location. When more shots sounded, he narrowed in on the likely area and saturated it with five three-round burs
ts.

  He swapped magazines, but there was no more shooting. After he was sure he was out of danger, Lucas rushed into the brush to confirm that he’d neutralized the last gunman, and looked down at the scavenger’s bloodied form.

  Lucas then spun and ran as hard as he could toward Nugget and Jax, who were clomping away, now at least four hundred yards down the trail.

  “Ruby! Sierra! Stop!” he cried between gasps, his energy waning now that the battle was over. Ruby must have heard him because she reined the mule to a stop and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Lucas!”

  Sierra turned Nugget and they rode back to where he was bearing down on them. He slowed to a stop and waited as they approached, and only saw their bound wrists at the last moment. Lucas unsheathed his big Bowie knife and made short work of the rope and, when he had freed Ruby’s hands, repeated the effort with Sierra and Eve. Once they were untied, Sierra helped Eve down and, after dismounting, hugged Lucas impulsively, as did Eve from behind. Lucas stepped away after a long moment and patted Eve’s head for lack of a better response.

  “Who were they?” he asked softly.

  “Gypsies. Trail bums,” Ruby said. “Looks like a bad day for them all around.”

  “Thank God you found us,” Sierra said. “They were going to sell us to the cartel. There’s a reward.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Lucas said, looking away from Eve’s piercing cobalt eyes.

  “How did you find us?”

  “Followed your trail.”

  “So you know they’re searching for us–” Ruby said.

  Lucas shushed her with a curt gesture and cocked his head.