Compass Call: Survival & Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 3) (63 page)

During their journey, the company will encounter a variety of groups and individuals that will test their resolve, and even their will to continue. John must act quickly and decisively, and follow the promptings of his inner voice if he’s to keep the group together and alive, let alone reach their final destination; a destination that promises peace in a world gone mad. Only with the spiritual awakening of the other members in his company, will John manage to accomplish his difficult task.

“Tread Fearless” will also introduce John and Pete’s other good friend, Mark, as he makes his way north from San Antonio. Mark’s story will mirror John’s by virtue of his desire to reach sanctuary, but all other similarities are few and far between. As Mark heads out to link up with John, a distance of more than five-hundred miles, he begins to question his intent and motivations. For him, the journey becomes as one of mobile survival, sprinkled with a heavy dose of exploration and adventure.

(
EXCERPT FROM TREAD FEARLESS, BOOK FOUR,
THE GATEKEEPER SERIES)

M
ark smelled them before he saw them. Since ash fall, the wind often carried the smell of death in the air, so he hesitated longer than he should have. He just managed to stop and dismount his mountain bike when two men emerged from the cedar bushes ahead. They stepped onto the rough, unmarked road from both sides and stared at Mark, eyeing him intently from thirty feet away. He could feel their intent as they assessed him as a target. “Keep your hands where we can see them and we won’t hurt you!” yelled the guy on the left. He then nodded to his large partner and they began walking cautiously together toward Mark.

“I heard that before,” mumbled Mark. He knew it was a risk traveling the isolated rural roads alone, especially during hours of daylight, but as far as he was concerned, the risk of traveling like that far outweighed the risk of traveling the more heavily trafficked freeways and highways at any time of the day. They were deathtraps waiting everywhere, and as far as he was concerned, it was worth the additional time, distance, and trouble traveling on the lesser known roads.

After successfully handling several delays since his departure from San Antonio, Mark was confident he could handle this one as well. The change brought death, destruction and desperation, but it didn’t elevate people’s skills, ability or intelligence, only their desperation. Most of the trouble he encountered thus far was from people who had no idea how to use a weapon, let alone their hands. Guns, actually hand-held weapons in general, tended to give untrained people a
false sense of security. Mark learned to use that to his advantage. On more than one occasion he willingly surrendered his weapons just to get close enough to dispatch a threat with unarmed combat, skills he acquired and honed over years of training and sparring. Then, once the threat was neutralized, it was only a matter of recovering his weapons and being on his way.

Mark was pleased the two men continued to approach. Ten feet of travel brought them within attack range; the edge of his attack range, but attack range just the same. He suppressed a grin and waited patiently for the attackers to come closer. The smaller white guy was the immediate threat. He walked with a slightly hunched gait. His right arm extended with a pistol in his hand. He resembled a modern-day goblin, complete with dirty appearance and toothy grin. The other, a very large Hispanic man, carried a bat, and was apparently the goblin’s pet troll. He knew the thugs were alone, because if they had help hidden in the trees, their approach would have been different, more confident and direct.

Mark didn’t like traveling the rural farm and ranch roads in Texas because they tended to dip and chest a lot, and take him through many choke points and potential ambush sights. But there was water to be found, and what worked for the enemy also worked for Mark. The thick vegetation that often skirted the rural roads, the same that facilitated this ambush, also served as cover for Mark when he rested during the day.

It annoyed him to be interrupted like this, but he had to respect the situation, because even a stupid goblin could kill him with a lucky shot. But despite his frustration at being caught in yet another life threatening situation, Mark was perfectly comfortable with where he was. That didn’t mean he was willing to abandon his equipment and supplies to these two idiots, because everything he owned was in the racks on his bike, or in the trailer he pulled behind him. In fact, the equipment represented his only hope for survival, and he was willing to kill or die for it.

The challenges he faced since leaving San Antonio changed his perspective on survival. Once he accepted the fact that he was already dead, that he was living on borrowed time, he no longer feared death. But if he was to keep on living, then he sure as hell was going to hold on to what he had.

The two men must have picked up Mark’s unusual calm, because they stopped and looked at each other. Mark needed them to come a little closer, so he raised his hands high into the air and said, in a terrified voice, “Please don’t hurt me! I don’t know what you guys want with me. You can have everything, just let me go!” Then he stepped away from his bike. He didn’t want it getting in the way when he needed to move. “I can pay a toll if that’s what you want!”

Mark studied his first target more closely. The white guy on his left looked to be in his late twenties, but it was hard to tell by his dirty appearance. His face was smeared with dirt or grease, and his clothes were torn and dirty. Long brown dreadlocks hung behind his head, wrapped tightly under a faded yellow bandana. A thin, scruffy beard, and sagging, open, hoops for earlobes, confirmed the man’s goblin past. He pointed an old and somewhat rusty looking revolver at Mark’s chest. The pistol was held out at arm’s length, which was something Mark planned to take advantage of.

Mark was also armed, but he wasn’t a fast-draw kind of guy; that was more of John’s specialty. Like John and Pete, he was of the gun culture, but he wasn’t in a position to use any of his guns, at least not at the present moment. The Colt 1911 on his hip, and the licensed and fully automatic Colt AR15 across his back, might as well have been stashed in his bike trailer with his .22 for all the good they served him at the moment.

He wasn’t sure why the white guy just didn’t shoot him and take all his stuff. That’s what Mark would have done in his situation, but he figured the man didn’t want to shoot because he either didn’t trust his weapon, or his ability to hit his target.
Maybe you’re out of ammo
, thought Mark. But since he couldn’t see into the wheel cylinder, he
decided to treat the gun as if it was loaded. After all, even an old rusty gun could still kill a man.

The large, bald, Hispanic man moving along the right side of the road entered Mark’s range and warranted his immediate attention. Strangely, he looked more confident with his weapon, which was a simple baseball bat, than the white guy did with his revolver. The Hispanic man was taller than Mark, by at least a foot, and outweighed him by more than eighty pounds. That meant the giant was close to seven foot tall and weighed some three-hundred pounds.
Definitely someone to consider, even without a gun
, Mark said to himself.

The bat swung loosely in his hand by his side, and for the first time Mark noticed it was spiked with large nails. The business end of the bat was coated in dried blood, and bits of flesh and hair were matted around the nails. Mark didn’t know if the dried flesh was a result of recent use, or if it was placed there to create terror in his potential victims. Either way it disgusted Mark, and he decided to eliminate both men instead of just incapacitating them.

A now familiar surge of adrenalin began to rush through his body, and he eagerly embraced it. In days past, the surge allowed him to evade pursuers, and deal with a variety of other life-threatening encounters, but he only recently learned how to manage it. The first time he filled with adrenalin, when the fight was over it left him shaking uncontrollably for more than thirty minutes. Mark since learned to stop the shaking by spending all the adrenalin. The last thing he wanted to do was burn more calories through strenuous exercise, but it was the only way to neutralize the downside of the rush. This time it wouldn’t be a problem, he planned to get physical with these two troublemakers.

“Get on your knees,” hissed the white guy, as he stopped just out of Mark’s reach. “P! Get over here and get his guns.” When the man turned to look at his partner, Mark attacked.

With cat-like speed, he shot forward and closed the distance to the white guy before the man turned to face him. Mark batted the
gunman’s arm aside as he fired. Ignoring the gun all together, Mark sought to occupy his target’s space, but instead of knocking the man down, he drove his knuckles deep into the man’s throat.

Without giving a second thought to the mortal blow he just delivered, Mark pivoted around the man’s right shoulder and set himself up for the next strike. While facing the man’s back, effectively placed goblin between him and troll, Mark saw the white guy drop his pistol and hold his damaged throat with both hands. He knew that it was a normal response to such a strike. The brain’s reaction to such pain was to send hands there to investigate, and that’s exactly what Mark wanted.

The giant moved closer, and Mark was almost ready for him, but first he delivered a powerful kick to the inside of the white man’s right knee. He felt the knee snap with the kick, and literally heard the damaged ligature separate from the bone as he drove through the targeted joint. With his foot on the man’s knee, Mark literally forced the man to the ground. With the goblin out of the fight, Mark turned his full attention to the giant.

He looked up just as the giant was completing a wind-up of his bat, intent on closing the deal with a full-force swing to Mark’s head. Mark leaned away and narrowly avoided contact with the nail-enhanced bat. But the big man put so much energy in the swing of his bat that he couldn’t maintain his grip on it, and it went flying from his hands and sailed into the cedar bushes behind him.

Both men acknowledged the moment with a surprised pause. Had the scene been anything other than life and death, it would have been funny, but Mark wasn’t in a laughing mood. His only thought was thinking about how to quickly dispatch the idiots before he got hurt. So, before the giant could recover from his surprise at losing his weapon, Mark stepped forward and delivered a powerful shin kick to his groin.

Mark knew he did it right, but the big man didn’t react the way he was supposed to, which was to double over in pain and grab his
balls with both hands. Instead, the giant stepped forward and enveloped Mark in his massive arms. As the man began to squeeze, Mark felt his breath leaving his lungs. He knew he would be unconscious in moments if he didn’t do something, so he slammed his forehead down against the bridge of the giant’s nose. The target loosened his grip for a second, which gave Mark just enough room to raise an arm to his face. Then, with a thumb, he pushed deep into the giant’s left eye.

Mark drove his thumb along the side of his attacker’s nose, and continued to push into the eye socket to scoop out his eye. It came free of the socket with a wet pop, and the big man screamed in pain. He released Mark and raised his hands to his damaged face.

Finally free of the constricting death grip, Mark breathed deep and stepped back. He unsnapped the pistol’s safety strap, drew, and then fired two quick shots into the big man’s chest. The large .45 caliber rounds knocked the man off his feet, and he hit the ground with a heavy thud. Mark moved left and scanned the area for additional targets. Seeing no additional threats, he holstered his pistol and said, “Nice work, Mark. You’ve just wasted two bullets, and you’ve just made a lot of unnecessary noise.”

Mark walked over to the white guy and saw that he was still alive, though only barely managing to breathe through his crushed windpipe. The man croaked in ragged gasps and wheezed. Mark had absolutely no sympathy for him, but he was curious about his activities, so he knelt beside him and asked, “What’s your name, friend?”

Through clenched teeth, bandana man replied, “Futtth uuuuea,” followed by a cough and a long, wet gasp.

“That’s not very polite,” replied Mark. “Do you have any friends in the area?”

The man didn’t seem to understand Mark’s question, so he repeated it. When the man didn’t answer, Mark decided the two thugs were working alone. Besides, they were too dirty and desperate to be anything more than lone operators. Confident he wasn’t entering a
gang controlled area. Mark asked the man, “Do you want me to put you out of your misery?”

The man stared coldly up at Mark, but didn’t reply. “Suite yourself,” said Mark, “The coyotes will find you laying out here tonight, unless of course you can drag yourself to safety.”

The man’s eyes went wide and tears began to spill down his cheeks. His struggle for breath became more pronounced. The man was obviously upset with that possibility. “I’ll tell you what,” added Mark as he stood, “I’ll leave you your pistol, and you can decide what to do with it when I’m gone.”

Mark picked up the revolver, and opened the cylinder, and saw that it held three unfired rounds. He pushed the ejection rod and dumped the cartridges into his open palm. After reinserting one cartridge, he closed the cylinder and slipped everything into his pocket.

After searching the dead giant, and finding absolutely nothing of survival value, Mark returned to his bike. He stood it up and inspected it for damage. He was very familiar with every detail of his bike, for it served as his primary mode of transportation to and from work for the past three years. He actually preferred riding his bike to driving now that he was in shape. It was a short ride, about fourteen miles one way, but he loved the fact that he was able to shed unwanted pounds. He also liked the fact that he didn’t have to fight for a parking space.

The bike had gotten him to the outskirts of Austin in three days, though he didn’t yet know if he was near the city. His only regret was that he didn’t heed John’s warning and make his way north before the disaster. As for the City of Austin, he didn’t know what to expect, but if it was anything like San Antonio had been, then he would keep to the outskirts. The only problem with his plan was that he didn’t have a map, and he needed one so he could resume his night riding.