Trackers 4: The Damned (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Raven clutched his rifle, gritting his teeth, and prepared for another fight.

  They rounded another corner and the roadblock came into view. Dale Jackson and three other men had their rifles shouldered at a pickup truck that had stopped about a quarter mile from the barriers. Raven could vaguely make out two men sitting in the cab and a third in the bed.

  “Looks like we got some observers,” he said.

  Lindsey parked the car behind the concrete barriers and killed the engine. Raven opened the door and kept low on his way to the two trucks backed against one another on the bridge over the Big Thompson River.

  “What you got?” Raven asked Dale.

  Dale kept his gaze on the truck. “Three males. All heavily armed. Said they wanted to talk to someone in charge.”

  “That’s me,” Lindsey said. “I’ll see what they want. Watch my six.”

  “Hold up,” Raven said, grabbing her arm. “Could be a trap.”

  He let go of her sleeve and did a quick scan of the spindly trees framing the gorge, dividing the area horizontally into thirds and scanning the canvas from left to right, right to left. Nothing stirred in the hills to either side of the road, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a sniper out there.

  “I’ll go,” Raven said.

  “No way.” Lindsey started to move again, but Raven grabbed her by the arm a second time. She whirled around and glared at him.

  “Let go,” she growled.

  Dale raised a brow. “You two gonna dance, or you gonna go talk to those guys?”

  “Fine,” Raven replied as Lindsey squeezed between the barrier.

  “She means business,” Dale said. “Better not to argue with her, man.”

  “No shit.” Raven kept one eye on her as she made her way down the street.

  “Detective Lindsey Plymouth with the Estes Park Police Department,” she shouted. “Identify yourselves.”

  The two doors on the pickup opened, disgorging men dressed in military fatigues and wearing ski masks. The guy in the pickup bed unslung his rifle and pointed it at her. Raven lined up his sights on the center of the man’s Colorado Rockies hat.

  “Try it, you piece of shit, and I’ll give you a third eye,” Raven grumbled.

  Dale glanced over, but then turned back to his own scope.

  The driver of the pickup strode toward Lindsey, carrying a duffel bag in one hand. He stopped about twenty feet from her and threw the bag at her feet.

  “Sheriff Thompson has a message for you about his request,” he said.

  “We have another day to fulfill his request,” Lindsey said.

  “Right,” the man said with a shrug. He walked back to the truck while his buddies covered him with their rifles.

  Raven kept his crosshairs centered on the man in the bed, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze off a shot.

  “What the hell do you think is in the bag?” Dale whispered.

  “Not sure I want to know.” Raven’s gaze flitted to Lindsey. When she picked up the bag, it left a trail of red behind on the road.

  Raven cursed. Thompson had threatened to send Colton back in pieces if they didn’t comply with his demands. Lindsey hurried back to the roadblock with the bag. The driver and passenger got back into the pickup truck and slowly turned around. The muffler fired like a gunshot, making Lindsey hit the ground as the truck peeled away.

  The man in the bed hollered, “See you soon, bitch!”

  Raven hopped over the barricade and ran to her. Lindsey remained on her knees, looking down at pavement. The contents of the bag had rolled out when she dropped. A severed head lay face down in a puddle of water.

  Dale and the other men made their way over. “Is it Colton?” one of them asked.

  Lindsey slowly reached toward the head, but Raven placed his hand on her shoulder before she could turn it over.

  “Let me,” he said, helping her to her feet.

  The volunteer deputies and Lindsey all watched as Raven took a knee, held in a breath, and slowly turned the head over.

  Cold brown eyes looked up at Raven.

  He let out a breath. It wasn’t Colton after all.

  Raven plucked a note from the man’s mouth. Standing, he smoothed out the paper and read it aloud.

  “See you tomorrow with the first drop and my man, or Colton’s next.”

  _____

  Police Chief Marcus Colton took a drink of the watered-down soup. He wasn’t all that hungry, especially after seeing Clint Bailey dragged out of his cell at sunrise. The screams had continued into the morning, and ended in a guttural choking.

  He knew he would never see the farmer again. And if he didn’t find a way out of here, he would suffer the same fate. But Clint had been his best hope of escape, and even if Colton did manage to find a way out, there was nowhere to run.

  He looked out the barred windows as the sun went down over the hills. Snowflakes fluttered past the glass. Several men armed with rifles and shotguns patrolled the walkway around the compound. Sheriff Thompson was using this place as a hub to terrorize the surrounding communities. According to the chatter Colton had overheard, Estes Park was the next stage of his expanding operation.

  A Jeep pulled up outside the building, and Colton clenched his jaw when he saw it was Raven’s. They had taken the vehicle, his gear, his guns. And soon, he feared, they would take his life.

  He stalked away from the window and turned back to the cell door. Being on the wrong side of the bars in this place made for one of the worst moments in his life. The combination of fear and loneliness threatened to send him over the edge. Sitting in the darkness, having no way of knowing what time it was, how his family was doing, or if he would ever see them again, brought him to the dark edge of post traumatic stress.

  You have to be strong. You can’t give up.

  Colton finished the bowl of soup, downed the glass of warm water, and moved back to the bench. The food and water was a good sign, he decided. They wouldn’t waste resources on someone they wanted to kill.

  Now that he had nutrition, he needed rest. Several minutes after settling into his bunk and closing his eyes, the door at the entrance to the jail clanked open and footfalls clicked on the concrete.

  Colton sat up, alert and ready. He balled his hands into fists, just like before a boxing match, prepared to fight if he had to defend himself.

  The light from several candles warmed the hallway. Next came the glow of a torch. Three men walked in front of his cell door and stopped. In the glow of the flames, he saw the rough face of Sheriff Mike Thompson.

  “Marcus, good to see you,” Thompson said, like Colton was an old friend. His eyes flitted to Colton’s fists. “Now that’s no way to greet me, is it?”

  Colton ignored him and scanned the two goons alongside Thompson. They were both carrying rifles, and had machetes sheathed on their duty belts.

  “What did you do with Clint?” Colton asked.

  A crooked smile from Thompson. “Didn’t you hear?”

  Colton tried not to react, but he wanted to throw a punch so badly he had to count to ten in his mind to calm his rage.

  Thompson stepped up to the barred door and squinted at him. “Clint told me you two were planning to escape. Is that true?”

  Colton kept his lips sealed.

  Thompson slammed the bars in front of Colton’s face with the speed of a boxer. When Colton didn’t so much as flinch, Thompson smiled again.

  “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, Marcus. I’m going to assume Clint was lying about your little escape plan.”

  “I say we kill ‘em,” said the man on the left, in a Russian accent.

  Thompson frowned and looked over at the man. “Ivan, we can’t kill everyone, or we lose our leverage. Maybe they didn’t teach you that in the motherland.” Thompson directed a finger at the cell. “Marcus is leverage.”

  Colton had noticed several of Thompson’s men were Russian. Years ago, Colton had worked several cases involving
the Russian Mafia, who had come to Fort Collins for the marijuana business. They brought other drugs. Harder drugs that destroyed families. The mobsters themselves were ruthless, brutal men who murdered their adversaries and dumped the bodies in ditches like trash.

  Colton added the Russian mafia to the growing list of threats that included Nazis, organized crimes bosses like Nile Redford, and desperate civilians.

  Thompson turned back to Colton. “Your people have one more day to deliver my man, Jason Cole. You better hope they do, Marcus. You better hope they also bring those supplies and don’t short me. I really don’t like to be shorted.”

  Colton wanted to tell Thompson to go fuck himself, but he said nothing.

  “You’re a quiet son of a bitch today,” Thompson said. “I figured the great Marcus Colton would have more to say. Maybe that little redheaded detective will be more entertaining.”

  Colton grabbed the bars and squeezed. “Don’t you touch Lindsey, you piece of shit, or I’ll stomp your face in!”

  Thompson grinned in the torchlight. “Ah,” he said. “The dog still can bite. That’s good. I got plans for you.”

  Colton cursed himself for losing his cool.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt her. As long as your people come through.” Thompson wagged a finger and added, “But if they don’t, I’m going to have some fun with her.”

  Colton clamped his jaw shut and watched Thompson lead the two men away from the cell. He knew he shouldn’t call after them, but the anger was too much to hold back.

  “Hey Thompson, why don’t we finish this the old-fashioned way? Like men. You and me. One on one in a cage match.”

  That got Thompson’s attention. He halted, and then slowly walked back to look at Colton.

  “I heard you’re a boxer, but you’re nothing more than a washed-up old man now, Marcus. You wouldn’t be able to last a minute with me.” Thompson laughed, but there was no real humor in his stony expression. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that, actually. When I’m done beating your eyes in, I’ll piss in your hollow sockets. But not tonight.”

  Thompson left with his men. Colton took a seat on the bench, his heart stuttering and his breathing labored. He knew his chances of getting out of here alive were slim to none. There was only one man he could count on now to help him get back to Estes Park and his family.

  2

  THE WHITE CORRIDORS of Constellation were quiet. The underwater bunker was usually much more active, but tonight only a few staffers walked through the halls of the underwater facility.

  The calm before the storm, thought Secretary of Defense Charlize Montgomery. She had just come out of a meeting with the new vice president, Tom Walter. He and Secretary of Health and Human Services Ellen Price were leading the effort to combat the spread of cholera in the survival centers. Several had already been abandoned due to the outbreak. All across the country, people were dying from diseases that had been mostly eradicated in the twenty-first century. The conditions, both at the FEMA camps and in the cities were terrible.

  But there wasn’t much they could do.

  They were lucky here at Constellation, where they still had access to plenty of food, clean water, and state-of-the-art medicine. She was heading to the medical ward now to visit Albert Randall. Charlize wanted to check in on him before hitting the sack for a few hours. Big Al was fighting for his life. He was in a critical condition from the round he took to the abdomen while rescuing his sister in Charlotte, North Carolina. The doctors were doing everything they could to save him, but internal bleeding and complications from the first surgery had left him in a coma.

  Her breath caught in her chest when she considered that they might lose him. She tried not to show how worried she was, but Ty heard it anyway.

  “You okay, Mom?” he asked, turning slightly in his wheelchair.

  “Yes, sweetie. Everything’s okay.” It was a lie. She wasn’t okay. She’d lost her chief of staff, Clint Johnson. She’d lost her brother. She’d almost lost Ty. And now she was close to losing her trusted bodyguard and closest friend.

  After checking to make sure no one was coming down the hallway, she stopped pushing Ty and, kneeling down in front of his chair, wrapped her arms around him. “I just want you to know how much I love you,” she said.

  Ty’s voice was muffled by her tight embrace. “I knew something was wrong.”

  Charlize struggled to find the words to express what she was feeling. “You can never tell someone you love them too many times,” she said at last, letting him go.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” Ty said.

  Charlize smiled, but her heart was breaking. She was supposed to be the one comforting him, not the other way around. “I know. You’re such a brave boy.”

  She stood and returned to the back of the wheelchair. “I got it,” he said, taking over.

  They continued down the passage, with Ty wheeling himself faster than she could walk.

  “So, it sounds like you and Dave are getting along pretty well,” she said, trying to keep up. “He’s about your age, isn’t he?”

  An enthusiastic nod from Ty. “He’s funny. I’m happy Albert was able to rescue him from the bad people in Charlotte.” He slowed down and waited for her. “Mom, are the bad people everywhere now?”

  In the past, she’d been careful what she told her son, but he was old enough and had experienced enough to understand now. It was also important that she didn’t keep things from him. She wasn’t sure how long they would be living down here, and the last thing she wanted was for Ty to grow up sheltered from the real world.

  “Yes, sweetie. But there are also good people too, and good will always outweigh the bad,” she said. “People like Big Al.”

  “Yeah,” Ty said. “But the bad ones keep getting away. When are you going to find Fenix?”

  The question stung. “We will find him,” Charlize said. “You have to trust me.”

  When they got to the medical ward, she placed aside her anger at the man who had killed her brother. This was a place for healing, not thoughts of revenge. The thirty-bed facility was filled to the max, with patients ranging from an injured congressman to Albert’s twin sister, Jacqueline.

  The empty lobby was outfitted with cream-colored chairs and a rack of magazines. The engineers who designed this place had made it look damn close to the waiting area of a real hospital. Charlize could almost forget they were deep underwater.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Can you stay here for a minute?”

  Ty reached over to grab a magazine off the rack. His fingers couldn’t quite reach, and Charlize plucked the magazine for him. It was yet another reminder that he was limited by his disability‌—‌and limitations would kill most people in the new, brutal world they lived in.

  Doctor Parish was typing at her station around the next corner. She looked up when Charlize approached.

  “Ah, Madame Secretary, good evening,” Parish said with a tired smile.

  The doctor’s dark features sagged with fatigue. Chances were she’d been working for over twenty-four hours; that was normal for many people at Constellation lately, including Charlize.

  “How is he?” Charlize asked.

  “He’s made some improvement in the past two hours,” Parish said. She gestured for Charlize to follow her. “Come see, I think you will be surprised.”

  “Can I bring Ty?”

  Parish shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

  Charlize returned to the lobby. “She said we can see Big Al!”

  He wheeled after Charlize and Parish down another hallway, past a nurse leaving one of the rooms. The young woman nodded at Charlize and smiled at Ty.

  Charlize glimpsed the room where Albert’s sister was resting. She was sitting up in bed and staring blankly at the opposite wall. The sight chilled Charlize to the core. The flow of drugs across the Mexican border hadn’t stopped after America’s lights went out. Things were only going to get even worse.

 
; Parish stopped outside of the fifth door on the right, and opened it to allow Ty and Charlize inside. Albert lay in the hospital bed with a white sheet up to his chest. Charlize hadn’t thought it was possible for him to look like anything less than a giant, but the former football player seemed almost fragile. He gritted his teeth as he tried to sit up.

  “Easy there, sir,” Parish said.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” Albert said when he saw Charlize. His voice was strained, but his tone was as polite as ever. He smiled as Ty wheeled into the room. “How are you doing, buddy?”

  “I’m good,” Ty beamed. “How are you, Big Al?”

  Albert managed to shrug a shoulder, which appeared to hurt, judging from his reaction. “I feel like I got shot,” he said.

  Charlize walked over to his bedside. “How long have you been awake?”

  He looked to Parish.

  “A little over two hours,” she said.

  “How’s Jacqueline?” Albert asked.

  “She’s going to be okay,” Parish said. “In twenty-four hours, she should have most of that poison out of her system.”

  Albert relaxed against his pillow. “And Dave?”

  “He’s my new friend,” Ty said. “We’re gonna play racecars later.”

  “He’s a good kid.” Albert slowly shook his head again. “He saved my life.”

  Charlize narrowed her gaze at him. This was the first she’d heard about Dave saving anyone’s life.

  “He told me that he slayed one of the Orcs, but I thought he was kidding,” Ty said. “Is it true?”

  Albert looked up to Charlize and then back to Ty. “He stabbed a man who would have killed me.”

  A nurse knocked on the door and opened it. “Sorry to interrupt, but Colonel Raymond is here,” the young woman said.

  Charlize nodded. “Let him in.”

  Colonel Mark Raymond moved into the open doorway. “Good to see you’re awake, Officer Randall,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Raymond’s gaze flitted to Charlize, and she could see he wanted to talk to her alone. After excusing herself, she stepped into the hallway, leaving the door slightly ajar.