And then they would pay.
They would all pay, and beg for death before he was finished.
Chapter 4
Lucas pushed Tango harder during the cooler morning hours, anxious to make the gulch before noon. The big stallion was game and held to a trot much of the time until the terrain became too uneven. The sun was a blazing disk in the azure sky by the time Lucas crested the rise and spotted the track that led down into the gully. He adjusted the flat brim of his hat to better shade his eyes while Tango picked his way down the loose gravel trail. He gripped the M4 tightly as he scanned the area.
When he reached the sight of the massacre, at first glance nothing appeared disturbed since he’d last been there. He dismounted and made his way to the two Raiders he’d shot, whose bones had been picked clean by animals. He glanced at the pile of skeletons and stopped midstride.
The Raiders’ guns, plate carriers, and magazines were gone. He remembered that he’d left them in his haste to spirit Eve to safety, but they were nowhere to be seen.
So someone had been there, though whether surviving Raiders or other scavengers, Lucas had no way of knowing.
His heart sank at the reminder of the long odds against success, but he continued on to where the dead lay, their bones bleached by the sun’s rays. A quick survey of the skeletons confirmed that nothing of value remained – even their boots had been removed. Little went to waste in the wilderness for long.
He returned to Tango and mounted up. It was obvious that there was nothing left for him, and he was glad to be rid of the place, the atmosphere tainted as it was by recent death. Lucas directed Tango back up the trail, and once at the crest, the horse sprinted for the distant canyon, as though he could also sense the bad juju in the ravine.
Lucas arrived at the canyon mouth forty minutes later, and it didn’t take long for him to piece together what had happened. The Raiders still lay where they’d fallen, only their guns and magazines missing, confirming to Lucas that at least some had survived. He walked the area slowly, the wind moaning as it funneled through the gap, and stopped when he came upon Carl’s remains. His ruined flak jacket told the story of his demise.
“Poor bastard,” Lucas whispered.
After combing over the other skeletons and finding nothing, he returned to the sheriff’s bones and piled small rocks over his remains until they were covered. He removed his hat and murmured a prayer for the dead, and when he replaced it, his steel-gray eyes were hard.
Lucas did a count and saw that the sheriff and his deputy had succeeded in killing most of the Raiders. By his reckoning only two had survived, unless he’d missed a body. He did a final walk through the killing field to ensure he hadn’t, and paused beside the outcropping from which Alan had fired, imagining the scene. For some reason Carl hadn’t made it to safety – why didn’t matter – but the deputy had managed to rid the earth of the lion’s share of the miscreants. Many had died out in the open, but several of the dead marauders had taken up defensive positions behind cover of their own. The desiccated bones of four horses told Lucas they hadn’t seen the ambush coming, and he wondered again at what had gone wrong for the sheriff that he’d been killed so far from Alan’s hiding place.
Back at the canyon entrance, he spotted a patch of tan fabric shifting in the breeze about a hundred yards away. He rode toward the movement and recognized Alan’s shirt and pants – or what remained of them. As they had with the other corpses, carrion birds and insects had cleaned the bones, but the condition of the dead man’s clothing made it clear that he hadn’t gone easily.
Lucas lowered himself from the saddle, crouched beside the remains to study the shredded garments, and shook his head, a frown twisting his features. The shattered ribcage, arm bones, and skull weren’t difficult to interpret – he’d seen the same before. The dead man’s boots were still lashed together, the Raiders too lazy to take them after loading themselves up with the guns and belongings of their fallen companions.
“They dragged you by your feet behind their horses, didn’t they?” he muttered, closing his eyes and imagining the atrocity.
Overhead, a hawk wheeled lazily, riding an updraft in search of prey, the cycle of life grinding relentlessly forward even as Lucas mourned the loss of the young man. Deep down he understood that there was nothing he could have done to save Alan, but his guts still twisted at the sight of the deputy’s broken body and the knowledge that his last moments on earth had been agonizing beyond imagination.
Lucas removed his collapsible camp shovel and dug a shallow grave while Tango stood by. When he’d placed the young man’s remains into the ditch and covered them with shale and dirt, Lucas wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm and spoke a few words, the prayer all too familiar of late. “May God have mercy on your soul,” he ended, and then glanced at his watch. Time was wasting, and every minute he spent there any trail was going cold.
Lucas considered the dead Raiders but couldn’t bring himself to expend the energy to bury them – the job would have taken most of the afternoon, and he didn’t have it in his heart to forgive the scum. He was comfortable with that failing; Lucas would leave forgiveness to a higher power, because all he could think was that he intended to reward the surviving Raiders for their evil with payment in kind.
Just as he’d done to the cartel.
Although it gave him no happiness to recall the events in Pecos, he had to admit some satisfaction at having evened the score. And much as he didn’t want to have to go into the belly of the beast in search of the surviving Raiders, he would do what he must and would show them the same mercy they’d extended to the deputy. While it might have been unenlightened, nowadays his approach was more Old Testament eye-for-an-eye than turning any cheeks.
The meek could inherit the earth; but in the meantime, he was going to bring the pain to those who reveled in their misdeeds.
“Come on, Tango. Got a long way to go, and nobody’s getting any younger.”
The horse eyed Lucas and waited for him to swing into the saddle. Once his boots found the stirrups, Lucas pulled the reins and pointed Tango east, toward Mentone, the shabby scattering of buildings at the devil’s crossroad where any survivors would have gone to regroup.
Chapter 5
Lucas smelled Mentone long before he saw the glow of campfires on its periphery. Night had fallen an hour earlier, and he’d made his way cautiously after dark, using the rifle’s NV scope to verify that he wasn’t riding into an ambush as he neared the hamlet. The wind had shifted and was coming out of the east, carrying with it the smoke from burning wood and the stink of raw human waste. He knew from his encounters with the Raiders that bathing wasn’t a big part of their culture, but even so the stench was overpowering as he reached the town limits.
He didn’t have to search far to find Mentone’s social center – a pair of torches framing the door of a long, low building and faint electric light seeping from its windows announced the spot even before shouts and ragged curses drifted to him from inside. A faded hand-painted sign hung crookedly over the entryway, featuring a crude depiction of a bottle and a woman’s exaggerated curves, beneath which it proclaimed in red, “The Mayor’s.”
Lucas had heard of the place from Duke, but had successfully avoided traveling to Mentone until then. It had a reputation as a dung hole, even by postapocalyptic standards, which was saying a lot: barely six blocks of dirt roads and squalid dwellings, the Raiders having seized the town and turned it into their vision of hell soon after the flu had cleared the population for them.
Only the most unscrupulous traders set foot within its boundaries, although it was understood that those who came to dicker were safe from predation while there. A necessary safeguard, but one Lucas was skeptical of, and one he wasn’t planning to put to the test if he could help it.
Seven horses were tied to a hitching post by a watering trough, and Lucas dismounted and nodded to an older Raider who was watching the animals from the shadows. H
is Mohawk was ratty and graying, a pale stump extruded from cutoff trousers above where his left knee would have been, and a sawed-off shotgun lay in his lap.
“Some rounds in it for you if you keep an eye out,” Lucas said.
“Treat him like he’s my own flesh and blood,” the guard assured him.
“What’s the story inside?”
“Leave your weapons in your saddlebags and keep your nose clean, things should be fine.”
“They got food?”
“Guess some might call it that. Best to stick to the firewater, if you ask me.”
“Fair enough.”
Lucas had dined on some of his jerky on the ride and was used to long hours with an empty stomach, so the dearth of edibles didn’t faze him. He had no intention of eating anything served in the saloon – rather, he’d wanted to see how honest the old man was.
He stowed his weapons and approached the doors. Inside, a guard with a fireplug physique gave him a cursory frisking as Lucas breathed through his mouth, the odor in the room nauseating. When the bouncer nodded him past, Lucas made for the bar and bought a bottle of rum, there being no beer or anything less than eighty proof available.
Lucas took a small pull on the liquid, almost gagged at the taste, and then set it down on the plank and glanced at the crowd in the gloom. Two overhead fluorescent lamps that had seen better days provided scant illumination, which was probably just as well – the six women there more resembled losing kickboxers than female companionship, and the men ran the gamut from filthy and rangy to worse than he’d seen in anyone still alive.
One of the whores looked him up and down and offered what Lucas supposed passed for a come-hither smile. He managed a small bemused smirk and looked away to where four Raiders were playing cards at the far end of the room. Lucas watched them for a hand and then felt a presence at his elbow. He turned slowly to find the prostitute at his side.
“Well, hello there, cowboy. Buy a lady a drink?” she asked. Lucas tried not to gape at her meth-rotted teeth and the grime crusted in her hairline, and forced a smile to his lips.
“Maybe in a few. Thinking about sitting in for a few hands.”
“You can do that after. They’ll be there all night.”
“Sorry. Not in the mood right now.”
She slid a chipped glass toward him. “Make a little deposit for later?” she asked, indicating the rum.
“Sure. Why not?” Lucas said, and splashed several inches into the cup.
“I’m Lacey.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Save enough chips to go for a ride, okay?” she said. Her eyes were hungry, the whites yellowed from jaundice that matched her sickly pallor, and her skin was pocked with sores and blackheads.
“Good advice,” Lucas allowed, and went back to watching the players. Lacey tossed back the rum like it was water, brayed an abrasive laugh, and sashayed over to her companions, all of whom were equally attractive, from what Lucas could make out.
After ten minutes of sizing up the game, Lucas asked the bartender how to get chips. The man indicated a heavyset Raider at a small table in the corner with a bottle in front of him, and explained that “the mayor” was in charge of that, and to talk to him.
Lucas walked over to the man and introduced himself. “Want to get in the game.”
“Sure. What you got?”
“Fifty rounds of .45, couple magazines of 5.56mm ball.”
“Won’t stay in long with that.”
“Not planning on losing.”
The mayor nodded. “Bring it in. But no guns.”
“I heard.”
When Lucas returned with the ammunition, the mayor examined the bullets and then counted out twenty chips. “There you go.”
Lucas eyed the tokens. “That’s it?”
The mayor pointed at a sign by the back door that listed the value of chips in both guns and ammunition. “Everyone’s a winner here. You can trade ’em in on your way out, get your rounds back and then some if you know how to play.”
“You own the place?”
The mayor answered with a complacent smile. “That’s right.”
“Only place to trade in town?”
The Raider nodded. “One-stop shop.”
“You got anything besides guns and ammo?”
“Got everything you can imagine, and then some.”
Lucas nodded. “Good to know.”
“Whatever you want. Long as you got barter, sky’s the limit.”
Lucas took his chips and sat down at the table. Three of the men were obviously Raiders, and the fourth was a trader whose leathery skin and blackened nail beds spoke to weeks on the road.
“Gents. What’s the ante and the game?” Lucas asked.
The men glared at him, and the one who was dealing eyed Lucas’s paltry stash. “Couple chips to start. Five-card draw.”
Lucas parted with half his chips to get a feel for the players’ styles, those small tics or lack of them that indicated whether they were bluffing or not. Once he was confident he’d sized them up, he won small hands, keeping his bets modest, avoiding winning too much or losing to the extent that he ran dry of chips. As the evening progressed it became easier to win, the others getting drunk as time wore on, but nobody was talkative, and after an hour of play Lucas pushed back from the table, having learned nothing but that Raiders weren’t conversationalists, and if anyone knew anything, they were keeping it to themselves.
He cashed in his chips and retrieved his ammunition and magazines, and with a few extra chips in hand, went in search of Lacey, who hadn’t been particularly lucky that night, either. After several generous dollops of rum, she grew increasingly talkative, and he invited her to one of the small two-top tables so he could pick her brain.
“Heard about a big to-do up north about a week ago,” he tried, once half the bottle had disappeared down her throat.
“Yeah?”
Lucas nodded. “Big haul, but lot of Raiders killed.”
She shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”
“You hear anything about that?”
“About a week ago, you say?”
“That’s right.”
She drained her glass. “Might have.”
He refilled her drink and took a pull on the rum straight from the bottle. “What did you hear?”
“Depends.”
He placed three chips on the table. “Be mighty appreciative for any information.”
Her eyes darted to the side for a beat. “Why?”
“Just because.” He reached for the chips, but she shook her head.
“Couple of guys were in around that time. Talked about a big gun battle. Big score, too.”
“You know them?”
She shrugged again. “I might.”
“They here?”
Another head shake. “No. Cleared out a few days ago. Meaner than snakes, even by Raider standards.”
“What did they look like?”
“One’s short, black Mohawk. The other’s skinny and tall, hair cut close to his head. Dark brown.”
Lucas glanced around the room. “That could be half the guys in here.”
“The short one had a tin star on his vest. Can’t miss it.”
Lucas’s eyes gave nothing away. He pushed one of the chips across the table to her. “Know where they went?”
“They camp a couple of miles out of town when they’re here.”
“Which way?”
She regarded the chips. “Southwest. Probably the only ones there, if they’re still around.”
He slid the chips to her and stood. “You have a good night, Lacey.”
“They’ll gut you,” she said softly.
He nodded. “Be a shame.”
“You going to drink that?” she asked.
Lucas set the bottle down in front of her and looked away. “Not thirsty anymore.”
She reached for it. “I’ll watch it for you.”
“Do that.”
<
br /> Chapter 6
The road west was paved, although like all the others, long since covered in a thick coating of dust. Tumbleweeds clogged the two-lane road in sections that had washed out, and abandoned vehicles rose from the earth like giant boulders in the starlit landscape, blocking the route. Lucas avoided the highway, preferring to stick to a trail that ran parallel. Hoofprints in the reddish dirt signaled that he was likely on the right track – other riders had passed that way recently, although he couldn’t know whether hours or days before.
It wasn’t lost on him that he was headed toward the highway that ran from Loving to Pecos, although he was a good five miles away. Still, the thought made him uncomfortable, given that it was a certainty the Loco cartel was on the warpath, turning over every stone to find them. While he hoped they would have given up after several days of failing to pick up their scent, he couldn’t assume they’d thrown in the towel – especially in light of Sierra’s revelations about the reason Magnus’s group had enlisted their help. She was correct that the Crew would never give up in their hunt for Eve, which heightened his sense of futility at burning time looking for a vest that could well be in Mexico by now. But they were low on options, and given his slim odds of success, the vest was the best they had.
The husk of a ruined farmhouse materialized on the horizon, and Lucas thought he could make out the flicker of a campfire near it. He swung his M4 up and gazed through the night vision scope.
There. He was right. It was a fire.
When he was closer, he dismounted and walked Tango toward the ruins. At the edge of the property, he tied the horse to an old wooden fencepost and whispered in his ear, “Wait for me. I’ll be back soon.”
The fire was small and well-concealed, if he hadn’t been looking for it. The structure shielded it from the east, which was where all but Raiders would be coming from, that being the artery to New Mexico. A lone horse, its ribs pronounced ridges along its thin flank, stood near what had once been the building’s garage. As he approached the fire’s glow, he could only see one figure, and after confirming his impression with the scope, he stepped into the open, rifle at the ready.
The Day After Never - Purgatory Road (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 2) Page 3
