There was no need.
Chapter 22
After circling around on foot with a pair of branches to erase any evidence of their tracks, Lucas led the way east. He seriously doubted that the cartel would be able to find anyone willing or skilled enough to employ the dogs again, but there was no harm in taking precautions. Likewise, he had little fear that the few survivors would try to give chase – like all cowards and bullies, once their superior numbers had proved useless in winning the battle, the stragglers would continue on their way back home, tail between their legs.
Even if he was wrong, he knew the area better than they, and with only three riders remaining, he wasn’t worried. The cartel gunmen would have to first find them and then work up the appetite to confront them – neither likely, given that the Locos were a city gang, unlike the Raiders, and were out of their element on the range.
He’d discarded the idea of riding down into the canyon to retrieve the dead men’s weapons, preferring to put distance between himself and the site of the battle. They’d won a hard-fought lead, and wasting it on scavenging would be stupid. The women were anxious to be rid of the area too, and he couldn’t disagree – the sight of all the dead strewn where they’d fallen was a gruesome reminder of the savagery that was now their everyday norm. He’d said a short prayer, commending their miserable souls to judgment, and they’d ridden away from the mountains.
“Where are we headed?” Ruby asked.
“There’s a decent place to camp for the night about twelve miles away,” Lucas said. “Figure four hours at this rate, maybe more, given the terrain.”
“Is it safe?”
Lucas shrugged. “Safe as anyplace, I suppose.”
“Shouldn’t we try to get further away?” Sierra asked.
“Horses have about had it. Can only push them so far, and then they’ll be of no use. They need rest.” He paused. “So do we.”
They reached the campsite in the late afternoon. It was sheltered by a high bluff and featured a creek below where they could rinse off and water the animals. There was plentiful vegetation around because of the moisture from the brook, and after Lucas removed the saddlebags from their backs, the horses, followed by Jax, picked their way to the water’s edge while Lucas set up camp, taking care to deploy his tripwires so they’d have plenty of advance warning if anyone tried to sneak up on them.
They ate much of Lucas’s remaining jerky and then settled in to sleep in the shade of a sprawling black willow tree as the sun continued its arc west. Lucas took the first watch, and they agreed that Ruby would take the second in three hours. He regarded the exhausted females with mixed feelings as they fell asleep – on the one hand, they were a responsibility he didn’t want or need; but on the other, they represented hope for the future. Eve stirred as though reading his thoughts, and he smiled at the little girl’s angelic face, haloed by her unruly dark locks, as she slumbered.
He removed the note from his pocket and studied it, but with no better results than before, the jumble of characters just as meaningless to him. That their fortunes lay in deciphering the note worried him, but he was too tired to give it more than a passing thought. More pressing was that they were out of provisions and running low on ammunition – either of which could cost them their lives. More survivors died from exposure, thirst, and starvation than at the hands of gunmen, and Lucas was acutely aware that those naturally occurring hazards were as deadly as anything man-made. Infection was the other fatal risk, he reminded himself, and he checked his arm wound, which thankfully seemed to be healing with no complications.
Time passed slowly, and he was relieved that a constant scanning of the horizon detected no dust. Their gambit had worked, and they were clear of their pursuers – although he understood it was a temporary reprieve. It was just a matter of time until another expedition was mounted, but by then they’d be long gone.
The question was to where.
For now, mundane realities like food were the most pressing, and he’d have to deal with those before thinking bigger – tomorrow, come morning, once they were all rested. For now, he needed to turn off his brain and get some rest as soon as his shift was over.
When the three hours was up, he shook Ruby awake. She sat up with a yawn and looked at Eve and Sierra.
“That was way too short,” she grumbled, and Lucas nodded.
“I agree. But it is what it is.” He hesitated. “You think we can depend on Sierra to keep watch when you’re done?”
Ruby frowned. “She was guarding us when the gypsies grabbed us. Not saying it was her fault, but they were right on top of us before she sounded the alarm.”
“You think she nodded off?”
“I don’t want to say yes, but the truth is I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t want to chance it.”
“We can split duty with her, if you’re worried. That way we’ll both get at least some rest.”
Lucas nodded and fished in his pocket for the note. He handed it to her with a grimace. “That’s the encoded message. See if you can make anything out of it. I can’t. I’ve tried, but it’s all Greek to me.”
Ruby squinted at it in the waning light. “Nothing jumps out at first blush. But I’ve got nothing better to do while on watch, so let me see if I can spot any patterns. It can’t be that complicated if the guy with Sierra referred to it and was able to decode it in his head.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Lucas unfurled his bedroll and lay down with his M4. “Wake me if you see anything. Even if you just think someone might be out there. I’d rather have a false alarm than be surprised.”
“I will.”
Lucas unstrapped his watch and gave it to her. “Wake Sierra in three hours. You take the first half of her watch with her, and I’ll take the second.”
“It’s going to be a long night like that.”
“That’s life.”
Lucas had barely shut his eyes when he was awakened by Sierra’s voice. She and Ruby were talking in the dark, and he pushed himself to a sitting position.
“Oh. Sorry, Lucas. I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Sierra said.
“You need to keep your voice down,” he warned.
“I was,” she insisted.
Lucas looked at Ruby, who was clutching the note in her left hand and the AK in her right. “Any luck?”
“I tried the likeliest combinations, but nothing.” Her jaw clenched. “It’s so frustrating. I mean, I could write a program to try thousands of different possibilities if I had a computer. Trying to do this manually could take forever.”
With a sweep of his hand, he gestured to the surrounding area dimly lit by the vaporous glow of the moon from behind high clouds. “Don’t see any Apples around here, Ruby. Try your best, but don’t make yourself crazy with it.”
“Good advice. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when I’m tired. I got some sleep this morning, so I’m more rested than you.”
“Not as young, either,” Lucas said.
“Don’t remind me.” She smiled. “But we fossils require less sleep. About the only plus to it I can see. And don’t worry. We’ll keep quiet.”
Lucas glanced at Eve beside him and nodded before lying back down. “Wake me when you’re ready.”
Ruby set the AK down and sighed. “Will do.”
He drifted off to the sound of Ruby and Sierra discussing the note in hushed whispers, frustration evident in their subdued tones. The sound faded as he lost consciousness, and his final thought was that they would need a miracle to make sense out of the gibberish he’d gone to such lengths to obtain.
Chapter 23
Sweat coursed down Luis’s face in spite of the cooling breeze from the west as the sun sank behind the mountains, his eyes on the crest above the canyon from which the shooting had erupted. He crept toward the scene of the massacre with cautious steps, leading his horse on foot. His two surviving men followed close behind, weapons at the ready, although they were al
l sure that the ambushers had long since absconded. They’d waited until dusk, unable to help any wounded in the barren wash, and were returning to load up on the force’s weapons and ammunition – better to have those stores of wealth than to leave them for someone else, Luis had reasoned.
They’d managed to recover two of the downed men’s horses that had bolted during the attack, and the last gunman had secured their reins to his saddle horn and was walking them along with his own. The rout over the last week had been devastating for their numbers – in just a matter of days, the cartel had gone from two hundred strong to no more than thirty-something – so every bit of gear would be precious in attracting new recruits.
Luis was stunned at how rapidly everything had fallen apart. He’d gone from the new leader of a still reasonable force to the head of a handful of survivors, which made the cartel’s hold over Pecos tentative at best, and with it, their power base.
Luis sighed. There was no more cartel – the Locos existed only in their minds. Cano had made that clear enough. Now that their numbers were negligible, they would be absorbed into the Crew without discussion – leaving Luis to explain to his men why they had gone from rulers of the town to subordinates to anyone with Crew ink on their face. He didn’t expect it to go down well with his men, but since the alternative was execution, they’d get used to it, he was sure.
Vultures flapped from the corpses when Luis and his men entered the gap, and orbited overhead as Luis moved to the first body, his nose wrinkling as he neared. The carrion birds had wasted no time, and much of the man’s face was gone. Luis reached down and scooped up his AK and slid it into his saddlebag before looking over his shoulder. “Get the magazines and pistols,” he instructed, and his men scrambled to obey his order. “It’ll be dark soon, and I want to be out of here by the time the sun sets.”
The men went to work, moving from body to body, picking the dead clean and packing their things in the saddlebags of the spare horses. Luis was going after an AKM lying on the shale when he heard a groan from behind him. He spun, his AK in hand, and searched for the source of the sound. It came again, and Luis abandoned the AKM in favor of approaching the survivor to put him out of his misery.
Luis froze when he saw Cano lying on his back. His plate carrier had been shredded by shrapnel, and the rocks behind his head were stained crimson. The grenade blast had left countless wounds on his legs and arms, and his face was crusted over with dried blood. Luis neared the man and knelt beside him to hold two fingers to his neck, and stopped when the Crew boss’s massively muscled chest rose as he inhaled.
“He’s alive!” Luis called to his men.
They rushed to join Luis and stood over Cano, mouths open in disbelief. The shorter of the pair shook his head. “He’s not going to make it. Best to put a bullet in him and get it over with.”
Luis frowned. “He’s of value alive. None dead.”
“Look at him. No way he survives.”
“He’s tough. He might.”
“With wounds like that? It’s a miracle he’s still breathing.”
“Get his plate carrier off.”
The pair removed Cano’s flak vest, and Luis studied his torso, which was largely intact where the ceramic plate had protected him from the shrapnel and the single round that had hit it over his right pec. Cano groaned again, and Luis nodded slowly.
“We need to get him back to Pecos.”
The gunmen exchanged a glance, and the shorter one looked doubtfully at Cano. “Whatever you want, boss. But he’s gonna be dead before we’re halfway home.”
“Maybe, but we need to try.” Luis pointed to the corpses. “Finish with the weapons and then we’ll deal with him.”
The men obeyed, the sun working against them, the scraggly trees at the top of the crest casting long shadows as the light faded. If the man made it, he would owe Luis his life, which would guarantee that the Locos remained largely unmolested by the Crew or at least became an autonomous branch of the organization. At least, that was Luis’s hope. Whether things worked out that way was a different story, but he had nothing better, so he’d play the cards he had.
Which right now, was a piece of hamburger who looked like he was moments from the grave.
Not a great hand; but still, better than being out of the game entirely.
And you never knew. Some folks were just too mean or stubborn to go gently. Cano appeared to be that kind. Luis had known others like him – inmates who’d been stabbed a dozen times yet just kept coming, intent on killing their attackers, and had lived to tell the story. They were the most feared in the yard, and Luis had no doubt that to ascend to a high position in the Crew, Cano had to have been cast from the same sort of clay.
So they’d spirit him back to Pecos, and if he died en route, leave his body for the scavengers.
For now, though, he was Luis’s insurance policy – one that he didn’t plan to squander.
Chapter 24
Lucas awoke to a spangling of sunlight against his face, the rays reflecting off the stream’s surface like yellow fire. He rolled to the side and rubbed his eyes, then sat up. He’d swapped duty with Ruby and taken her slot in the wee hours of the morning, and now she was sitting with quiet calm, surveying the horizon through his binoculars.
She set the glasses down and glanced at Lucas. “Well, good morning.”
“Morning.” Lucas twisted to where Sierra and Eve were still asleep. “Any breakthroughs on the code?” he asked quietly.
“Afraid not. Although I did have a thought.”
Lucas waited for her to voice it with raised eyebrows. “And?”
“We could really use some computer power.”
“You said that yesterday. We don’t have any.”
“I know. But I was thinking that I know someone who does.” She paused. “Or at least, who did the last time I spoke with him. It’s been a while.”
“Someone has a working computer?”
“Don’t be so surprised. I had one in the bunker. All you need is electricity. It’s not like every laptop in the world stopped working when the grid went down.”
Lucas nodded. “Makes sense. Where is he?”
“Artesia. Or at least, he was.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“He was complaining about his situation up there last time I talked to him. He might have moved on.” Ruby hesitated. “I wish they hadn’t destroyed your grandfather’s radio. I could have called him.”
“Got a lot of wishes,” Lucas agreed, and then his eyes flitted to where Eve was shifting and yawning as she awakened. “My buddy Duke has a radio. I was thinking we should go by there to stock up anyway. Two birds with one stone if you can reach your friend.”
“That would be great.”
Lucas regarded her. “What’s his story?”
“He’s a computer geek. Programmer, nerd, the whole nine yards.”
“Not a lot of calling for that these days.”
“No, but he can fix just about anything. Solar, batteries, you name it.”
“Seems like I remember the doc talking about a guy from up north like that – he could fix anything. But he said the fella was a nut job.”
Ruby nodded. “He’s definitely eccentric.”
Lucas studied her face. “How well you know him?”
“So-so. We had mutual interests.”
“You ever meet him in person?”
“Couple of times.”
“You trust him?”
“Much as I trust anyone these days. More important, we’re not going to figure out the note without some processing horsepower and some know-how. Right now I’m shooting in the dark. So is he better than nothing? Absolutely. Is it a lock? Nothing is.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bruce something…Combs, I think. But I’m sure about the Bruce.”
Sierra coughed and sat up. Ruby stood and stretched. “How far are we from Duke’s?” she asked.
“Maybe a couple hou
rs’ ride.” He looked to Sierra. “Morning.”
“Good morning. Did I overhear you saying we’re leaving?”
“Yep. Either that or starve.”
“Do we have time to clean up?”
“Sure. Just don’t dawdle.”
“Yes, sir,” Sierra said with a half smile, and held out her hand to Eve. The little girl took it and they walked together to the stream. Lucas eyed them as they left and turned to Ruby.
“You get enough sleep?”
“More or less. You?”
“About the same.” Lucas paused. “You really think this Bruce character can help with the note?”
“I have no idea. But I do know that I can’t figure it out on my own, and he’s the only one I know I can reach out to. I’ve tried some substitution cyphers, but to have a chance at making those work, it’s trial and error. If you don’t know what the actual characters to be substituted are, it’s almost impossible to figure out – which is where a computer comes in. If you write the program correctly, it can try a million different variations in the time it takes to go to the bathroom. So unless we have unlimited time to decode the note, that’s our best bet.”
Lucas nodded. “Part of me thinks this may all be a wild-goose chase.”
“Not like we have any other options, do we?”
“True.” He smiled grimly. “What do you make of Eve?”
“Make of her? I like her. She’s whip smart and very mature. And she likes horses. Why?”
Lucas debated telling her about the odd feeling he had about the child, but decided it would sound crazy to give voice to his thoughts – thoughts he hadn’t fully processed. She was undoubtedly mature for her age, but that wasn’t it. There was something more to her, something he was having a hard time defining.
Whether or not it was important was hard to say. He couldn’t see how; but then again, you could fit under a microscope what he knew about children – especially females. He’d had a hard enough time figuring out the adult versions, much less the new models.
The Day After Never (Book 2): Purgatory Road Page 12
