Sampson's Legacy: The Post-Apocalyptic Sequel To Legacy Of Ashes (Earth's Ashes Book 2)

by Ric Beard

Same page, then.

  “I could use a break from your snark, anyway. I’ll ride out with Moss. If we can get the drugs, should we just go on to the compound?”

  “Send up a drone when you’re back in the area,” Lexi said. “I’ll follow up with Jenna and let you know.”

  “Sounds like you have a deal, Porter,” Sean said.

  “No one calls me that. I left it on the Sacred Plains. Call me Moss.”

  “The Sacred Plains?” Sean asked. “Sounds like some kind of Native American tribal land or something.”

  “All in time, my friend,” Moss replied. He shook Lexi’s hand. “What say we get a couple hours on the road before we camp for the night? Considering the time, the truck will probably stay in town overnight.”

  “Agreed. That’s quite the haul.”

  “Good luck, Lexi,” Moss said. He squeezed Sasha’s shoulder, leaned toward her, and whispered something.

  Sasha’s eyes ticked over to his sister and Sean thought she detected a smirk. Lexi raised an eyebrow. Then Moss gave Sasha a one-armed hug and the moment was gone.

  Sean squeezed his sister.

  “Watch your back,” she whispered.

  Chapter Five

  DON'T SHOOT THE DOG

  5

  The mildew stench in this place was milder than the others along the hilly strip of old-world shops, but it still caused Lexi to crinkle her nose as she shot awake. The tubular sleeping bags Sasha had stowed in the back of the Black Cat were comfortable in themselves, but when the woman in black had pulled one of the engines out of the vehicle, plugged lines into the bags, and circulated liquid through them to keep the women warm, Lexi had started sweating almost immediately. Between the stench and the heat, she’d only been on the edge of sleep when the rumbling sound in the distance brought her fully into consciousness. Wondering how her ears had captured the sound over the steady rainfall, she slid out of the bag.

  Shivering against the chill in her underclothes, she donned her combat suit hurriedly and shoved her knives into the slots on the back. Slapping her Tab against the magnetic holster on one hip, she took up position in the open doorway with rusted hinges but no door.

  “What is it?” Sasha asked with a throaty croak.

  “Truck coming up the hill.” Lexi poked her head out and squinted. Tapping her SmartGlasses, she said, “Zoom times eight.” The glasses suppressed the glare of the four headlights stacked in twos on either side as the truck lumbered slowly up the long, meandering hill that had undoubtedly once been an asphalt road, now degraded to the black dust mixed into mudpack seen throughout the region. “Enforcers. Definitely one of Sampson’s.”

  Snagging her handheld from her holster, she brought up the display. Lexi jerked when something brushed her arm and spied Sasha next to her. The shorter woman had managed to slide out of her tube and cross the debris-covered floor without so much as a sound.

  Sean could learn something from this one.

  “Is it?” Sasha asked. “One of Sampson’s?”

  Lexi’s eyes wandered to the gap at the top of Sasha’s undershirt as she leaned close to see through the doorway, but thunder cracking overhead jerked her attention away. Black clouds blanketed the sky between the buildings. Heavier rain began to patter on the cracked sidewalk and the cool splattering of water reminded Lexi she hadn’t donned her boots. She looked down at the dusty floor and frowned at her bare feet.

  Lexi shifted the handheld computer, indicating a red dot on the screen, moving slowly toward the green marker that signified the decrepit shop in which they stood.

  Peering down at Sasha she shrugged. “Guess they came to us. Should we?” She didn’t bother to suppress the smile growing on her face. The wait for this moment had proven a long one and a little action would be an exceptional change of pace.

  The woman in black rubbed her fists into her eyes and sighed as she paced over to her tube and bent down.

  “Moss is always quoting his ancestor’s journal,” Sasha was saying. “Something about never letting an opportunity pass. Although it can become tiresome listening to it over and over again, I agree with this particular…” Her head titled up, her shining black hair falling off her shoulders, as she pulled on her black pants.

  Lexi raised her eyes from Sasha’s quads. “Sentiment?”

  “That’s the word!” Sasha turned and flicked a finger at Lexi. “Sentiment. Either way,” she raised her rifle and flipped the covers off her scope, “let’s do this while the doing is good.”

  She shrugged into her trench and stepped into her boots. She slapped two straps on each boot into place and stood.

  “How should we—” but Sasha was already stepping outside, crossing the sidewalk, and sliding between the rusted-out skeletons of what were once cars in an old town in West Virginia. Lexi grabbed her pulse rifle and followed, but by the time she crossed the threshold, Sasha was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey!” Lexi barked in a harsh whisper.

  She jumped when Sasha answered from behind her.

  “No need to whisper. They’re not going to hear you over the truck.”

  “How did you get behind me?”

  Sasha shrugged. “It’s what I do. You wanna distract them, or should we just go in ‘weapons hot?’”

  “How would you and Moss do it?”

  “If I wanted to do it like Moss, I wouldn’t have asked.” Sasha slipped between two of the orange-tinted cars under the cover of the predawn sky, and Lexi fell in behind her. “Moss is tactical. I figured since he went off with Sean, and he sent us girls out together, we could try some new things.”

  “Um. Ok?”

  Sounds like I wasn’t the only one craving some new company.

  Sasha bent behind one of the rusted monuments on the other side of the street and peeked over its open trunk at the vehicle progressing slowly up the hill.

  “No cover on the back, but I see guys standing in the bed. They’re looking in the shops as they go by, like they know there are people here or something. How about we wait until it passes, blow its tires out, and then trash the guys in the bed while we’ve got them in a bottleneck?”

  “Sounds good to—” But Sasha was off again.

  “Stay here, I’ll take the other side.”

  “But they’ll see—”

  No, they won’t. She’s covered in black. Her hair is black. The clouds are black. The sun isn’t up. The backdrop is black.

  Lexi’s eyes traced cars lining the side of the road toward her and then further up the hill beyond. She spotted an old pickup and shot off in that direction. Jumping into the bed, she wound the rifle’s power dial to full and searched the cars across the way. Sasha crouched between two vehicles a couple of rows back. Sasha’s eyes met her own, and the woman in black nodded.

  Lightning flashed above and bathed the interior of the rusty truck bed in blinding light. Lexi winced, imagining what might happen to Sasha if that lightning illuminated her as the truck passed.

  Lowering her head as the headlights approached, Lexi waited for the sound echoing off the shop faces on either side to indicate the truck had passed. Then she raised up, watched Sasha, and waited. Leaning on one of the cars, the woman in black seemed to tinker disinterestedly with her weapon as the truck paced slowly away. After a moment, her head bobbed up, she threw Lexi a go sign with a gloved hand, and scurried into the road.

  Lexi aimed at the back-left tire of the mammoth vehicle, and just as she pulled the trigger, the back-right tire exploded. The truck’s front tires screeched as the driver slammed the brakes, and the men standing on the bed slammed into each other, tumbling like they were mannequins into the back of the cab.

  The sounds of their muttering and barking at each other filled the tunnel between the buildings as Lexi dismounted the truck and paced shoulder-to-shoulder with Sasha up the center of the road. As they leveled their weapons, Lexi heard another sound over the men.

  “Is that a dog?”

  Sasha stopped and knelt in the road
. Lexi matched the motion.

  “A dog?” Sasha tapped her strange glasses as her head craned forward like a chicken. “Oh, neat. Look. Wow. That’s a pretty dog.”

  Lexi felt her forehead wrinkle as her eyebrows furrowed at the woman.

  A pretty dog? Is she serious?”

  “Okay, good.” Sasha said. “It’s tied to the rails. Don’t shoot the dog. ‘K?”

  Swinging her attention back to the truck, Lexi was amused. The men were still climbing to their feet, their loose ponchos in varying orders of disarray. She scoped her first target, turned a dial on the rifle, and nodded.

  “Firing.”

  Both weapons sent bursts of light screaming up the hill, the tracers zipping through the air toward their targets. Two men standing on the back of the truck jerked next to each other, and one fell over the side. As the others screamed orders at each other and rambled around the bed, more tracers ripped through the air, and two more targets fell. The final two men had just made it to the tailgate when their lives ended with a thud onto the surface below.

  Eye still plastered to her scope, Sasha rose and marched toward the truck.

  “Come out of the truck!” She yelled. “Come now or you die in there!”

  The truck door squealed on its hinges, and Lexi held her crouched position, looking to acquire the target exiting the cab. The man slid down onto the road with his hands held high as the dog jerked at its rope, struggling to disembark the bed near the tailgate. Through the night vision on Lexi’s glasses, she could see the driver’s ratty beard reached to his neck, a smile of fear pasted between the wild brown hairs surrounding his mouth.

  “Down on your face, asshole!” Sasha yelled. She jerked her rifle toward the ground. “Now! Do it! Do it!”

  The man hit the ground hard and held his hands out past his head, palms flat. Lexi rose and jogged toward the truck, halting about thirty feet behind Sasha and panning her rifle from right to left to ensure there were no targets coming from any of the buildings. Lastly, she leveled the gun on the dog, in case it broke free of its tethers and lunged at Sasha.

  Sasha stood over the man with the barrel of her rifle pressed to the back of his neck. The dog barked incessantly on the back of the truck, but Lexi realized its binding was a length of healthy chain with no rust in sight. Rain pounded Lexi’s shoulders, and her curls were matted into straight lines hanging over her face.

  “Why were you scoping out these buildings?” Sasha asked. “Is someone else here? Lie to me, and I’ll splatter the road with your brains.”

  “No, we were just cruising, scavenging.”

  “Bullshit,” Lexi said. “You’re one of Sampson’s. You guys don’t scavenge. You steal. You murder. Why were you moving so slow?”

  “The road’s narrow. We were being careful. Snipers—”

  Sasha bore her gun down on the man’s neck, and he turned his face sideways to keep his nose from breaking on the road.

  “Lie one more time, mister,” Sasha said. “Please.”

  “Just kill him,” Lexi bluffed.

  Sasha looked up, shrugged, and pulled the trigger. A bright flash emitted from the barrel. The captive jerked a few times before his muscles settled.

  Lexi jumped back and instinctively raised her gun to the sky to make sure she didn’t shoot her companion.

  “What the hell?” Lexi splayed her arms in a ‘V’ above her head. “What are you doing?”

  Sasha tilted her head to one side. “You said to kill him.”

  “I was trying to scare him!”

  “Scare?” Sasha muttered, looking down at where the pool of blood spread out from the man’s splattered skull. “Oh.” She cocked one shoulder and let it drop. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?” She dropped her arms. “What in the hell!” Lexi turned and kicked the air in front of her. “Dammit!”

  “We’ll find more trucks,” Sasha said, raising her handheld and shaking it so Lexi could see the screen.

  ““I thought Moss said you don’t just run around killing everybody? So, do you ask question, much?”

  Sasha’s tone remained stable, as if she were being asked if she liked food.

  “Sure.” She half-shrugged again. “We ask questions if we want to know something.” She looked down at the corpse again and holstered her Tab. “Moss doesn’t like to kill people at all. I mean, he does what he has to. But ever since his military run with OK City, he’s trended back toward what he was before.”

  “What, exactly, is that?” Lexi asked.

  The dog yipped. Lexi’s eyes darted that way. The animal lowered itself, its belly rubbing the truck bed.

  Sasha followed her gaze and glided toward the back of the truck.

  “Hi there,” Sasha said to the animal. “You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?”

  Who the hell is this woman? Lexi mused.

  The dog was soaking wet, its hair matted and sticking to its skin. Lexi didn’t think it was pretty.

  “Are you a boy or a girl?” Sasha said, tilting her head.

  “Looks like a girl,” Lexi grunted, still perplexed.

  “Neat!” Sasha replied. She stepped forward. The dog raised up and yipped a couple more times, but the woman in black didn’t as much as flinch. “Such a pretty girl. Are you friendly?”

  “She’s barking at you. I wouldn’t get too—”

  Sasha’s boot tapped the back of the tailgate, as if testing its fortitude before jumping up onto the truck bed. Standing over the dog just beyond the animal’s reach, she cocked her head to the side.

  “I don’t know much about dogs. People back home had them, but my kind couldn’t.”

  “Your kind?”

  “Another long story.”

  Lexi threw her hands up. “Sure!”

  “Moss wouldn’t let me have one on the road, anyway.”

  “I don’t think dogs are very stealthy.”

  “I wonder how I can show it I’m friendly,” Sasha mused aloud.

  “Do you have any food on you?”

  “Nope.” Her hand shot out and grabbed the back of the dog’s mane. “Sit down, baby.”

  To Lexi’s utter surprise, the dog sat. Sasha’s head swiveled and she smiled at Lexi.

  “See? She’s a good dog.”

  The dog’s eyes focused on Sasha as its nose twitched at the air between them.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  Sasha knelt down. “Just kind of did it. Moss always says you gotta show animals you mean business. We run into all kinds of things in the wilds. I even saw a bear once. You ever seen a bear?”

  “Of course, I’ve seen a bear.”

  Sasha nose scrunched up as she mocked. “Of course, I’ve seen a bear. I’m the amazing Lexi Shaw.”

  Bitch. What is she…hmm…she’s right. I sound like a snob. But hey! She just killed someone. The competing thoughts caused her to sneer for a moment. Relax. Be cool.

  “Sorry,” Lexi said. “I tend to forget how much I’ve seen and that others…how old are you, Sasha?” She eyed the dog suspiciously as she waited for a response.

  “I’m 26 years.”

  Lexi puzzled at the way she answered the question as she leaned forward on the gate.

  Sasha reached a hand toward the dog, and the animal emitted a low growl. She didn’t jerk the hand back; she left it lingering in the air. After half a minute, the animal seemed to have growled itself out, and Sasha reached forward. The dog nipped at her hand but then pulled its head back and looked down. Lexi realized she was holding her breath and released it, remembering it was all about energy with animals.

  The Foundation had several dogs at the compound. Though all were treated as companions and slept inside the cabin that sat away from the laddered entrance that rose through a tunnel to the surface, they also served guard duty and as hunters.

  Sasha’s hand found purchase on the scruff of the dog’s neck again and the dog lowered its head even further, allowing the short woman to stroke its mane.

 
“Such a good dog,” Sasha said. “A good dog, indeed.” She looked up at Lexi. “I think we’ve made a new friend.”

  Lexi surveyed the bodies strewn about the truck and nodded.

  “And some new enemies.”

  The sun rose and the rain abated. Sasha tugged the leash to lead the mangy, soaked animal toward the edge of town as Lexi paced slowly, taking in the area in the new day’s light. Rust orange dominated everything metal from the cars, to the stains trickling down building exteriors from metal rooftops, to the gravity-fed water tower leaning perilously atop a wooden platform, anticipating a high wind to send it tumbling off its platform and crashing to the earth.

  Her mind conjured visions of people strolling under the rickety overhangs fronting the shops, and ghosts of children laughing in this overgrown playground where a leaning, oxidized metal a-frame with steel hooks void of swings for a century, stood the lone monument to a saner world. The world humanity left behind. For the longest time, it had been the world Lexi Shaw couldn’t leave behind.

  Though expediency dictated that she put some distance between the two—three, if you counted the damned dog—and the bodies they’d left in their wake, Lexi’s lower back reminded her that even the aging-immune had to rest their muscles from time to time, and all the time on bikes of late wasn’t doing her any favors. Crossing the low brown grass, she sauntered to the metal frame of the ancient swing set as soggy pine cones submerged into the mud beneath her boots.

  She equated the vividly conjured images to The Foundation’s overarching mission. Remembering the world where children once flew through the air on swing sets like this one, slid down twirling slides, and ate ice cream at corner stores of these small towns, helped her to keep her goals in perspective when all she wanted was to kill every mother fucker who dared oppress others. Lexi saw these images as proof of Jenna’s influence as she endeavored to replace the memories that served as the fuel that burned her resolve: images of bloodbaths in the streets as humanity lost its sense of decency, manifesting in cataclysmic waves of self-preservation that rolled across the continent with an unyielding ferocity.

  We’re the last four people on earth who saw it. Well, except for Mikael.