“Like I said, whatever,” she said, changing her voice to a whisper before she spoke again. “The dude in the cowboy hat is Megan’s father, Franklin Atwater. He runs the horseback riding club just outside of town.”
A tall, trim black man with broad shoulders and a full beard stepped forward. He was in full Western gear, including flannel shirt, jeans, and a bronze belt buckle. His boots were polished and so was the silver bolo tie around his neck.
“My goodness, what happened to her?” Franklin asked, looking at Bunker first, then Stephanie. “Is she okay?”
Stephanie took the lead and answered. “We think she was sitting up on the seat when the bus crashed. I’m afraid she took quite a tumble.”
“You two found her?” Franklin asked.
Stephanie nodded. “Her and the rest of the kids.”
“Where’s Wilhelm?” Franklin asked.
“He didn’t make it,” she answered in a somber tone.
A long pause fell over the group.
“Don’t forget, I helped, too!” Jeffrey said, breaking the silence.
“I’ll bet you did,” Franklin said, smiling at the boy and patting him on the head.
“Yes, he was very brave,” Stephanie said, bending down to wrap her arms around her son’s shoulders. She finished her squeeze, then stood up to face Franklin. “You should know that the bus was hanging over a cliff when my new friend here, Mr. Jack Bunker, crawled in and risked his own life to save your daughter.”
Franklin looked stunned for a moment, then returned to reality. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, holding out his arms to receive his daughter. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you.”
Bunker gave Megan to him, letting her slide gingerly from his grasp. “Careful with her knee. I’d suggest keeping it supported and not moving it around too much. It’s pretty swollen.”
“I see that,” the father said before kissing his daughter softly on the cheek. “Megan, sweetheart. Wake up. It’s Daddy. I’m here now, darling. Everything is going to be okay.”
Megan’s eyes remained closed and there was no reaction to his gentle words.
Franklin shot a look of confusion at Bunker, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His eyes said it all.
Bunker could see his pain. “She’s been in and out since the crash. We think she might’ve hit her head, too. But since there’s no apparent bruising or blood, we really don’t know much for sure. You need to get her medical attention right away.”
When Franklin’s face turned from confusion to concern, Bunker continued, hoping to alleviate some of the man’s dread. “When she’s awake, she seems coherent and in reasonably good spirits. So hopefully it’s nothing serious. It could just be exhaustion. After all, your daughter’s been through a lot today. But a doctor really needs to examine her, just to be sure.”
“I’ll make sure she gets everything she needs. I can’t thank you enough. All of you, for bringing my little girl home to me.”
“It’s our pleasure, Franklin,” Stephanie said, putting a hand on Bunker’s shoulder.
Franklin turned and headed east, across the square.
Bunker waited until Stephanie looked at him, letting his courage rise before he had to speak again. “Hey, it’s about that time.”
“Please don’t go,” she said, pleading with watery eyes.
“I don’t have a choice. It’s been great getting to know you and your son. He’s a good boy, and you should be proud of him.”
Jeffrey wrapped his arms around Bunker’s bare legs and squeezed them tight.
Before Bunker could pry the kid loose, a swarm of children from the bus and their parents surrounded him, led by the Sheriff and Daisy. The Mayor remained behind, chatting with some of the other parents and kids.
The lawman came forward and put out his hand. “I’m Sheriff Gus Apollo.”
Bunker gripped it with force and shook it twice, looking the man in the eye. “Jack Bunker.” He needed to size up the new acquaintance and see if he could detect the sheriff’s intentions.
“My deputy tells me all these kids are safe because of you,” Apollo said. He turned his gaze at Stephanie and then Jeffrey. “And you two, as well.”
“We were just doing what anyone else would do, Sheriff,” Bunker answered, as Jeffrey let go of his legs and stood by his mother.
“Well, I’m not so sure about that. Risking your life for total strangers is not something you see every day. Not in today’s world of never getting involved.”
Apollo turned sideways and held out an open hand. “These parents have something they’d like to say to you. Both of you.”
A second later, a dozen hands came at Bunker and Stephanie, along with a barrage of appreciative phrases, including “God bless you,” “We owe you,” and of course, “Thank you.”
Bunker gripped each of their palms and gave them a quick shake. Some of the moms exchanged their handshakes for a firm hug, wrapping their trembling arms around Jack’s neck, then Stephanie’s.
Just when Bunker thought it was almost over, some of the little ones they’d saved decided to tackle Bunker’s legs with a group hug.
He wasn’t sure what to do with everyone watching, so he just stood there in the limelight, offering up a forced grin as he waited for the hug-fest to end.
Stephanie bent down and greeted the children who came her way with an emotional hug for each.
Bunker watched her with the little ones and wished he was as comfortable around emotional kids. Her motherly instinct was impressive and genuine.
When it was over and the children returned to their parents, he announced to everyone, “Thank you, folks. But I really need to be going.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” Deputy Daisy said, latching onto his arm. “We’ve got some celebrating to do.”
“That’s right,” one of the male parents said. “There needs to be a hero’s party.”
“No, that’s really not necessary,” Bunker said.
“Yes. Yes, it is. It’s the least we can do,” one of the soccer moms said, grabbing his left hand and leading him forward. “Do you have a place to stay, Mr. Bunker? We have plenty of room in our house.”
The twin girls Daisy had been walking with grabbed his other hand, pulling his arm free from Daisy’s grip. “Please, Mr. Bunker. Stay at our house. Please.”
Bunker looked at Stephanie, who was grinning from ear to ear. It was clear she was getting a kick out of all the attention he was getting.
“Welcome to my hometown,” Stephanie quipped. “Where no one ever leaves. Including me, apparently.”
He sighed, knowing it was going to be impossible to say no. He felt like a carnival freak who’d been imprisoned behind viewing glass with everyone huddling around and staring at him. The word uncomfortable didn’t begin to cover it.
“Just roll with it,” Stephanie said, winking. “You really don’t have a choice.”
He nodded. She was right. He didn’t have a choice. Not without raising suspicions. But it wasn’t all bad. Even though he’d never admit it, it felt amazing being appreciated by a bunch of strangers for once, instead of being feared when he rolled into a new town.
A genuine grin grew on his lips.
Maybe, just maybe, the new life he’d been looking for had just found him.
BUNKER
Dogs of War
Book 2
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jack Bunker kept an eye on the whirl of activity in the town square of Clearwater, Colorado as he slumped down in the back seat of an abandoned car.
Everywhere he looked, he saw more townspeople cruising by. Most of them had a candle or a gas lantern in their hands. A few flashlights were providing light, too, but after the sweeping failure that had crippled the power grid, the rest of the mountain community was relying on the only other source of light: the moon.
When the area around the car was clear, he unbuttoned his makeshift shorts and slid them off. It was time to replace them wit
h long pants to hide his embarrassingly white legs and provide some warmth. A second later, his feet were inside and after a quick pull up, he was dressed in a full-length pair of jeans for the first time since he’d cut the bottoms off the other pair to help save the kids on the overturned bus.
He fastened the lone button and yanked the zipper up to complete his cover-up, before stuffing the cutoffs into his duffle, where they’d probably remain until he got settled somewhere.
Bunker got out of the vehicle and went back to his previous spot: fifteen feet in front of the entrance door to the small-town clinic, where his new friend, Stephanie King, was waiting.
“That’s better. I thought I was going to need my sunglasses. Talk about a pair of supernovas,” Stephanie said when he arrived, her smile full.
“Yeah, I’ve never liked my legs much,” Bunker said, wanting to change the subject. He looked around for her son. “Where’s Jeffrey?”
She pointed at the ice cream parlor across the way. “They’re giving cones away before it all melts. Doesn’t look like the power’s coming on anytime soon.”
“Probably not,” he answered, watching the adolescent step up to the takeout window of the confectionery store and take hold of a vanilla cone wrapped in a white napkin.
The ten-year-old backed away from the purveyor and stood with the twin redheads he’d just met from the school bus accident. The girls were about half done with their melting treats, but Jeffrey looked determined to catch up.
Bunker smiled when he saw the spread of creamy white across Jeffrey’s pale skin and freckles. “Looks like he missed. Must be out of practice.”
Stephanie laughed. “Oh, I seriously doubt that. That boy has ice cream all the time. In fact, if I let him, he’d have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, seven days a week. No, he’s just being silly for the girls. I never should’ve told him that the way to a girl’s heart is to make her laugh.”
Bunker nodded, thinking of his first crush in school. “Ah, I remember those days well. Life was so simple back then.”
“Yep. Just school, homework, and ice cream. Doesn’t take much to entertain that boy. As long as he has his science game to play with, he’s good for hours.”
Jeffrey’s enthrallment with the educational device, Frankie’s Science Lab, was obvious when the three of them first met on the Amtrak train. But now that the EMP blast had taken it out, along with the rest of the electronics, the boy would surely miss it.
Bunker couldn’t hold back a laugh as Jeffrey continued his antics for the girls. “Well, I don’t know, Steph. Judging by the way he’s interacting with those girls, he might be changing his focus to something other than science. Something a little more interactive and tactile, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, good God. Not yet. He’s only ten.”
“Kids start early these days. Not like when we were their age. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know crap.”
“Me either. But with social media, they’re exposed to way too much at too young an age.”
“At least with the grid down, you don’t have to worry about that for a while.”
“One good thing at least.”
Even though Bunker had just arrived in this small town, its residents had been exceptionally kind and welcoming. Of course, showing up with fifty of their kids he’d just rescued from a bus hanging off a cliff didn’t hurt. It was certainly a memorable first impression, and a positive one at that.
Good impressions were not what usually happened when he arrived in a new town, at least not while on assignment for his former boss.
Actually, now that he thought about it, his last two jobs yielded the same results—the locals loathing his arrival, but doing so for two completely different reasons.
He figured as long as he kept his body art hidden from public view, his new-found reputation and cover ID would remain intact. The blowtorch had eradicated the ink on the sides of his neck, but burning the rest of it off his body wasn’t going to be an option—not just due to the excruciating pain and lengthy healing process, but because it was nearly everywhere, covering his arms, chest, and back.
He could accept living with a pair of disfiguring two-inch scars on his neck, but he wasn’t willing to cover himself with dozens of scars, even to hide all his sins.
Before the blowtorch decision, he considered checking into a tattoo removal center to see what they could do. However, that would’ve created a paper trail and raised too many questions, risking his former employer, Connor Watts, learning of his location.
Jack knew the rule like everyone else who’d joined the group: nobody walks away and lives to tell about it. Yet, despite his boss’ ruthless reputation, that’s exactly what he’d done.
If he continued to wear long-sleeve shirts, the truth about his past would stay hidden. So far, his plan seemed to be working. As long as he stayed in character and didn’t get noticed, there was little chance anyone would track him down under his new name. Especially now that the grid and communications were down.
At this point, only Stephanie King had caught a glimpse of the artwork on his back. She may have noticed some of the ink on his forearms, too, when he was shirtless and turned away earlier that day. However, with the Internet offline, she wouldn’t be able to look up the meaning of the numbers and symbols.
He figured he was safe—for now, anyway. The most condemning tattoos were on his chest, and those he could never let her see—or anyone else in town, for that matter. If word ever got back to Watts, he and his loyal men would come gunning for him and anyone else who got in their way.
Bunker felt a tap on his outside shoulder. He turned. It was one of the kids from the bus.
“What’s up, Tommy?” he asked the boy.
“My dad told me to give you this,” the tall, lanky kid said, his eyes blinking rapidly. He held up his hand and gave Bunker a lunch-sized brown paper sack.
Bunker hoped it wasn’t money or some other gift he couldn’t accept. “What is it?”
“Open it,” Tommy said, bobbing on his heels. “Dad said to tell you to share it with Stephanie, before it goes bad.”
Bunker opened the bag. Inside was a pile of thinly sliced roast beef. No bun, lettuce, or anything else. Just a big batch of Arby’s-style meat.
Tommy continued, “Charmer’s is selling their meat super cheap before it goes bad. Dad made me promise not to eat any of it on my way over here.”
“Where is your dad?”
Tommy turned and pointed to a round, stocky man who was about the same height as the kid. Their resemblance to each other was uncanny: same curly hair, wide nose, and chipmunk cheeks. No doubt they were related.
Bunker raised his hand and sent a single head nod as a thank you.
Tommy’s father gave him a thumbs-up signal, then turned his attention to the elderly woman standing next to him.
Bunker put his hand inside the sack and pulled out a clutch of roast beef. He held it up. There were almost no strands of fat in the beef. “Ah, the good stuff,” he said.
Tommy licked his lips.
Bunker took a wad of slices and split them equally between Stephanie and the delivery boy. Both of them devoured the food like a couple of starving T-Rexes. He gave them another round of slices before putting some into his own mouth.
The flavor exploded on his tongue. “Damn, this is good. I forgot how hungry I was.”
“Me too,” Stephanie answered, her mouth full. She smiled at Tommy and the kid grinned back, both of them working their teeth to grind down the food.
“Is all their meat this lean?” Bunker asked her before cramming another handful into his mouth.
“Yep. Charmer’s get their beef from a cattle ranch outside town. Doesn’t get any fresher than that.”
Charmer’s Market and Feed Store was on the left side of Clearwater’s central square. From what he’d been told, Charmer’s was the only true mercantile in the area, not counting the postage stamp of an ice cream shop on the adjacent corne
r and the newly-built convenience store and bait shop across the street. The long line of shoppers snaking its way across the grassy square from Charmer’s seemed to confirm that fact.
‘The Event’ earlier that day had sent everyone scrambling. The grid had failed across the area, plus all the electronics seemed to be fried. He expected as much, given what he’d seen that day during his train ride.
A sudden flashback tore into his mind, replaying the important events of the day: meeting Steph and her son in the Sightseeing Car, the locomotive stalling in the mountains, and then the falling aircraft narrowly missing the front of the train.
It still seemed like an impossibility: the airliner getting caught in a wicked updraft, sending it to the side at the last second. When he saw the wide swath of tracks missing, he knew how lucky they all were.
He could still smell the smoke in his nostrils from the fiery crash that took the unmarked, all-white plane deep inside the canyon along the river. If not for a miracle gust of wind, that brutal end would have been his destiny, too.
Bunker figured the unusual combination of failures meant only one thing—a high-altitude EMP blast. Nothing else seemed to fit the facts he’d gathered thus far. No mushroom clouds. No signs of radiation poisoning. No widespread destruction. Yet the power was out and electronics were useless.
It all fit the pattern. However, without more information, Bunker couldn’t be sure of any of it. Nor could the Mayor or Sheriff, who were huddled with a pack of citizens ten yards away.
Bunker wasn’t a technical expert by any stretch, but he’d read his share of technical magazines and science fiction novels during his free time since high school. That same span of fourteen years had also included two stints of employment, both of which made his skin crawl upon reflection.
He wasn’t proud of all he’d done for brother and country; however, if it weren’t for all the bad decisions he’d made, he never would’ve been here, in Clearwater, at this exact point in time. Without him, the busload of kids he’d rescued would’ve met their deaths at the bottom of Clayton’s Ravine. It was the first truly heroic thing he’d done in a long time.
Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 1, 2, and 3) Page 14
