Lucas stepped through the doorway and holstered the Kimber. Sierra leapt to her feet and ran to him while Ruby comforted Eve.
“You’re alive!” Sierra cried, and then they were kissing, water running down Lucas’s face onto hers. Lucas was surprised by the measure of passion he felt, but told himself it was relief, even if he suspected it was something more.
“Took you long enough,” Ruby said from beside the fire.
Sierra pulled away, and Lucas gave a lopsided smile. “Got a flesh wound that kinda held me up.”
“You’re wounded? Where?” Sierra demanded.
“My side. But it’s not going to kill me.” He exhaled a measured breath. “Would you get the first aid kit out of my saddlebag and patch me up? And then we need to get out of here – the gunfire’s going to draw the bad guys, as well as the town patrols, even in this soup.” Lucas looked down at Colt. “You okay?”
“Going to have a headache for a few days, but nothing fatal,” Colt said, sitting with his hand to his head.
“Got a pretty good gash there. Make that two patch-ups, and then we’re gone.” Lucas turned to where Frank lay dead. “Who’s that?”
“Our guide.”
“That going to be a problem?” Lucas asked.
“Maybe,” Colt responded.
Lucas considered the dead man. “We’ll deal with it when it is. Those shots will draw everyone we don’t want. Let’s get some bandages on us and ride. You know the way, right?”
Colt nodded. “Up the road.”
“The way Frank made it sound, without a guide to take us through, it’s going to be hell trying to make it,” Ruby observed.
Colt grunted. “Maybe not hell, but if the Apaches don’t buy our story, maybe purgatory.”
“And from there? Then what?” Lucas asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Colt said, ending the discussion.
Sierra returned with the kit, and Lucas removed his sopping flak vest and shirt. Sierra made short work of the bullet wound, which, using Ruby’s penlight, she verified had done no significant damage other than drain Lucas of blood. After wiping it clean, she closed it with butterfly stitches. A final application of antibacterial ointment and a bandage finished the job, and then she turned to Colt, whose injury only required a couple of sutures and some salve.
“You’re going to have an ugly bump for a couple of days, but other than that, looks like you got away light,” she informed him.
Colt glanced over at Frank’s corpse. “I’ll say.”
They gathered their things and Lucas said a prayer over Frank and even Bruce as they stood with heads bowed. Their amen, at least for Frank, was heartfelt, and then they collected Frank’s rifle and were out in the drizzle, riding through the darkness toward the intersection, and from there, the unknown.
Chapter 50
Cano drew his horse up short when they reached the truck stop, drawn by the sound of the shots, and dismounted outside of the main building, AK-47 in hand. Luis followed him through the entrance, and they stopped at the sight of Bruce’s and Frank’s corpses lying in the rubble.
“There’s your answer as to who was shooting,” Luis said.
Cano nodded. “But what does it mean? Two dead men – and no way of knowing whether they’re even related to our woman.”
“Awfully coincidental.”
The Crew boss frowned. “I don’t know that it’s that coincidental. We’re a long way from the lake. A pair of drifters get knocked off five hours later? Could be unrelated. We should go back to the lake and continue searching for a trail to follow.”
“Wonder where their guns are.”
“Whoever shot them probably took them.”
Luis strode to the remains of the fire, his boots crunching on debris underfoot, and felt it. “Still warm.”
“Not surprising. We know the shots were only a half hour ago.” Cano moved to something on the ground, pulled a flashlight from his plate carrier, and flicked it on.
“What is it?” Luis asked.
Cano picked up the long strip of bloody fabric and examined it before dropping it on the floor and straightening. “Looks like a man’s shirt soaked with blood. Or at least the sleeves.” He walked over to the dead men and played the beam over their bodies. “Not one of theirs.”
Luis joined him. “Shine your light over there,” he said, pointing to an area near the remains of the fire. Cano did as asked, and Luis nodded. “See that? Looks like someone cleared that spot so they could lie down there. More than one person, by the size of it. And recently – there’s no dust on the cement floor.”
“The two dead men could have done that.”
“True. But then where did the bandage come from?”
Cano’s face darkened with realization. “From whoever we wounded at the lake. Damn.” He made for the doorway, and Luis rushed to follow him.
Outside they looked at the wet pavement of the truck stop parking lot like detectives searching for clues. One of the Crew gunmen had a flashlight, and they split up, walking the perimeter of the lot. After ten minutes it was obvious that there were no tracks; the rain had wiped any traces clean, and the road north to the intersection was wet asphalt, so of no help.
When Luis joined Cano at the horses, the Crew boss’s expression was unreadable.
“What now?” Luis asked.
“Let’s assume this was them. The bandage seals it – the blood’s relatively fresh, and I agree that a wounded man wandering around the same night we hit someone at the lake isn’t coincidental. So what’s now is that we need to figure out where they went.”
Luis looked around at the drizzle. “How?”
“I didn’t say I know. I just told you what we need to do,” Cano snapped. He began pacing in the rain, his face a mask of rage. Luis said nothing, reasoning that Cano’s botched mission was his to work through. He’d already seen ample indications of the Crew leader’s violent temper on the ride from Pecos, and he didn’t want to have the man’s anger taken out on him.
Eventually Cano stopped pacing and retraced his steps to the truck stop interior. Luis called after him. “What are we doing?”
“Get in here and try to rest. We’ll wait until morning and then quiz the locals about this pair. Maybe someone knows them – there could be a clue in their identities. Right now, there’s nothing we can do. We’re screwed until daybreak and this storm blows by.”
The pair of surviving Crew gunmen tied their horses to a pole and Luis followed suit. He followed them in with his bedroll and spread it on the flat area near where the fire had recently blazed. Cano sat with his back to the wall at the edge of the cavernous space, gun in his lap, his eyes boring holes in the night. Luis called out to him as he adjusted himself on his pad.
“How are we going to get the locals to cooperate with us?”
Cano laughed, the sound harsh and humorless. “We’ll find a way to convince them.”
Luis leaned back and closed his eyes, his head swimming at the implication of Cano’s words, and wondered for the umpteenth time what he’d gotten involved in with his alliance with the Crew, and whether a life as a de facto servant to them was worth it.
As though reading his thoughts, Cano called out from the darkness. “We’ll call for reinforcements tomorrow at dawn. They won’t escape. We’ll follow them to the ends of the earth, and when we find them, they’ll wish they’d never been born. There’s no way in hell they get away. None.”
Luis closed his eyes and sighed.
He believed him.
Excerpt from The Day After Never – Covenant
Chapter 1
Duke lay on his stomach near a tiny stream, crossbow in hand and night-vision goggles in place. The black nylon straps of the harness enveloped his head like a medieval torture device. Flashes of lightning crackled on the northern horizon, pulsing on the periphery of the night sky like artillery in a distant battle, though the storm was too far off to hear any accompanying thunder.<
br />
He’d been in position for a good half hour, waiting patiently for dinner to show itself, secure in the knowledge that it was a matter of time before some unwary animal came in search of water and ended its stay on the planet. He had gotten into the nocturnal hunting routine quickly once he and Aaron had reached his hidey hole in the foothills, and they’d dined on rabbit and venison since they’d arrived.
Duke had abandoned the trading post, hauling everything he could fit on an overloaded cart. He’d rigged several solar panels at his simple two-room cinderblock bunker, which provided sufficient power during the day to recharge the scope and operate the radio as well as a small refrigerator that barely kept their food below room temperature. He missed the conveniences in his old home but realized he’d made the right choice; the danger from the Locos had become too substantial to ignore. There was no question in Duke’s mind that the trading post had already been looted, but he felt nothing when he thought about it – the place had served its purpose, and he could open another one elsewhere once any heat had died down.
He’d put out a warning call on the radio the morning he’d left, on the off chance that the kook in Arcadia might be monitoring the airwaves, but when he’d gotten no acknowledgement, he had ridden into the wilds without looking back, Aaron by his side. In the end, the buildings where he’d eked out his existence for the last five years were just some walls and a roof on a godless stretch of nothing, and he held no regrets at leaving it behind. That was how life went in the post-collapse world, and he was grateful for every day that he awoke drawing breath – there were far too many who didn’t each morning.
The hideaway, a former power line maintenance bunker that had long since ceased to matter, was tucked into the remote reaches of the foothills at the end of a dirt track that had washed away over the years and been reclaimed by weeds and prickly pear. But it had water from the stream, was on defendable high ground, and most importantly, was well away from the highway, and so relatively safe from the miscreants who used that strip of asphalt to visit terror on the unsuspecting.
A slight motion in the eerie neon green of his goggles drew Duke’s attention to a clump of brush to his left. A gentle breeze from the north wrinkled the surface of the water, thankfully carrying his scent downriver, away from where he’d detected movement. He inclined his head slightly, careful not to move any more than necessary, and eyed the foliage.
A furry form eased into view, its lapine nose twitching and long ears cocked slightly back as it surveyed the surroundings, some primitive part of its brain warning it of a danger its eyes couldn’t detect. Eventually thirst got the better of it, and Duke inched the crossbow forward – a relatively easy shot at fifteen yards, but not a given. He held his breath as the animal crept in fits and starts toward the water’s edge, and he peered down the iron sights. His finger began gently squeezing the trigger, and then the hare was gone in a blur, startled by an explosion of gunfire from up the slope.
Duke rolled and forced himself to his feet in one seamless maneuver, his heart thudding in his chest as shots shattered the night. The higher pitched rattle of Aaron’s AR-15 was answered by the deeper chatter of AK-47s – at least three or four, Duke guessed.
“Damn,” he muttered as he retraced his steps toward the bunker, crossbow in hand, the landscape glowing neon green in the scope. In the days at the hideaway they’d had no trouble and seen nobody, but they hadn’t relaxed their guard, sticking to shifts and keeping a watch for any sign of encroachment.
Based on the pitched gun battle taking place less than a quarter mile away, that lull in their misfortunes was over.
Duke stuck to a game trail and did his best to move silently along the dirt. The gunfire increased in volume as he neared the shootout. At the edge of the clearing beneath the building, he could make out muzzle flashes, and counted four gunmen blasting away at Aaron’s position.
He estimated the distance to the closest shooter, and frowned – he would have to skirt the brush line to get close enough to be deadly with his Sig Sauer 9mm pistol. The Barnett Ghost 369 crossbow was astoundingly accurate when used with the carbon hunting bolts he favored, but he wasn’t confident it would put a man down with a single bolt, whereas the pistol could place four rounds in an area the size of a soda can at fifty yards on a bad day. He pulled back into the thicket and moved north to where he’d seen the gunmen, and re-emerged almost directly behind the men.
Duke waited to confirm there were only four, and when he was certain of the count, slid the pistol from its holster and drew a bead on the nearest man, now no more than twenty-five yards away. He centered the sights on the man’s back and squeezed the trigger. The pistol bucked three times in quick succession, its deadly bark blending with the non-stop firing from the attacker’s AK. The crouching man fell forward, dropping his weapon, and Duke nodded to himself – one down.
The other three shooters hadn’t noticed their associate’s demise, and were still firing away at the bunker with undiminished fury. Duke sidled to his right and aimed at the next attacker, who was lying on his stomach to shoot at Aaron. Duke adjusted his the pistol slightly to compensate for the greater distance, and put his second group of three shots between the man’s shoulder blades. Two of the rounds shredded through his upper spine at an angle, exiting from the base of the front of his neck before being stopped by the hard dirt beneath him. The gunman flailed like a beached fish, and then fell still.
At the bunker, Aaron must have noted the halving of the incoming fire because his AR-15 rattled at the two remaining shooters, the 5.56mm rounds slicing through the grass around them. One of the pair cried out as a well-placed shot took the top of his head off. One gunman remained. Duke held his fire – the angle was less than optimal for a kill shot. The shooter and Aaron exchanged a few volleys, and then, realizing he was the sole member of his group left alive, the attacker rolled onto his side and pushed himself to his feet.
Duke waited until the man was close and emptied the Sig Sauer magazine at him. The 9mm rounds punched into the gunman’s chest but were stopped by the ceramic plate of his flak jacket, momentarily stunning him. He froze, and then a burst of automatic fire from the bunker cut him down from behind. Duke watched as the man’s mouth formed an O and he pitched forward, his AK-47 sailing from his hands as though pulled by an invisible cord.
Silence settled over the clearing, and Duke called out to Aaron, “We got them all. You okay?”
A few seconds later Aaron’s voice answered, “Yeah. You sure that’s everyone?”
“I’ll be there in a second. Don’t shoot.”
Duke made his way toward the bunker, pausing at each of the fallen attackers to toe their weapons well away. When he reached the building, he took in the bullet-pocked mortar around the door and windows and grunted. A grim-faced Aaron stood in the doorway, still holding his rifle.
“What happened?” Duke asked.
“They tripped one of the wires. Came up fast.”
“Any idea who they were?”
“Negative.”
Duke stepped into the room, ejected his spent magazine and slapped a new one in place, and went for his rifle, setting the crossbow by the door. “This is bad news.”
“Gunfire will attract some attention,” Aaron agreed.
“Let’s check on the animals.”
Aaron followed the trader to the area where the horses were corralled further up the hill, and was relieved to find them unharmed. On the way back to the bunker, Duke’s mind was processing furiously, his mouth a thin line, his eyes slits beneath a frowning brow.
At the killing field they quickly gathered the men’s weapons. Their hair was long and unkempt, and all were Caucasian, with no facial tattoos or other identifying marks. Three had their eyes frozen open, their limbs already stiffening in death, and Duke’s nose wrinkled at the stench rising from them – a combination of death, dried sweat, and lack of basic hygiene wafting from their tattered clothing.
“They aren’t L
ocos or Raiders,” Aaron observed.
“Yeah. Probably scavengers. Problem is there may be more of ’em.”
“Could be.”
“Which means it isn’t safe here anymore.” Duke’s frown deepened. “Hate to ride at night, but I don’t see much alternative, do you?”
“We can stay put and load for bear.”
“If there’s twenty of ’em, that’s not such a good idea. Besides, as you said, the shots will draw every Raider and lowlife for miles around.” Duke shook his head. “No, we got to pack up and git. Let’s do it.”
“Where we headed?”
“We’ll camp north of here. There are some decent spots near the river. We’ll figure out what to do next come tomorrow.”
Aaron nodded. “Damn shame. I was just getting used to this toilet.”
Duke threw a final glance at the dead men, and then fixed Aaron with a worried stare. “I want to be gone in ten minutes. Pack everything we can carry. Leave the rest. The cart would slow us down too much and make us targets.”
“Gonna miss the power,” Aaron said, looking up at the solar panels arranged on the roof of the building.
“We can add it to our regret list. Now hurry up – time’s a-wasting.”
They made short work of hauling their possessions to the horses. After packing the saddlebags of all four animals, they mounted up, Duke with his night vision goggles in place to guide the way, and set off in the darkness, guns held at the ready.
They rode for three hours and set up their camp on the bank of the Black River near a spit of sand just above a rapid, the water rushing in the narrows before burbling over a scattering of boulders. Once their tents were pitched, Duke tossed Aaron some dried jerky, and they chewed wordlessly. When they’d swallowed their meager supper and washed it down with river water, Duke sat cross-legged in the moonlight, his AR-15 by his side.
“Least it isn’t raining,” he said, eyeing the horizon where the distant storm was playing itself out.
The Day After Never (Book 2): Purgatory Road Page 25
