Enduring Armageddon (32 page)

I thought about it for a moment and shook my head. “No, let him sleep,” I replied. “I spent as much time with him as I could last night. I don’t want your first day alone with him to be a nightmare because he’s cranky.”

She nodded and placed her head on my shoulder while her arms wrapped around me. “Be safe,” she breathed into the fabric of my shirt.

“I will, don’t worry,” I assured her. I did some quick math in my head using our horses’ estimated speed of three or four miles an hour. “Jason said that New El Paso is about thirty or forty miles to the northeast of where El Paso used to be, so that should be around 160 miles from here. At Rusty’s pace we should be there in the afternoon four days from now.”

She nodded her head again. “I just remember how dangerous it was before and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“We’ll be safe. The zombies have all died off so it should be alright. I mean the merchants are out traveling the roads every day now.”

A soft knock on the door told me that Alejandro was here and ready to go. I gently pushed Rebecca back to create some separation between us and kissed her. “I love you and Jesse. And the baby,” I amended as I patted her growing stomach. “We’ll see you in about a week and a half.”

She squeezed me tight in a hug and then let go. “I love you too. We’ll keep an eye out for you.”

I turned and opened the door. Alejandro stood on our front porch wearing the same travel clothes that he wore on our trip south so long ago. “Hi, Rebecca,” he said with an awkward wave.

“Hey, Alejandro. Keep him safe, okay?” she said to him as I strapped on my gun belt that held Jesse’s pistol. I shrugged my shoulders into the backpack’s straps and picked up my battered old baseball bat. I never found my tomahawk after the cannibal camp, but the bat had been with me from the very beginning and it was showing the signs of a hard life.

“Will do,” he answered. “Ready to go, bud?”

“Yup. Just need to strap my KA-BAR on the backpack straps and I’ll be set.” Even though I’d just be taking the pack off in a few feet I’d learned through an almost disastrous incident to not attach knives to my body if I was wearing a backpack. On the journey to Balmorhea the backpack straps had rubbed against the snap holding my knife until they finally caught and unbuttoned it. The damned thing fell and stuck into my boot. Thankfully, the blade only penetrated through the leather a little, but it still cut my foot enough to make walking uncomfortable for several days.

After I secured the knife’s sheath to the strap I hugged Rebecca one more time. She whispered that she loved me and then it was time to go. I closed the door behind me and the excitement of the upcoming trip threatened to bubble over. The air was crisp, probably in the mid-forties. It was still cold enough at night to give all of the farmers a fit, just about every day, worrying over whether or not a killing frost would wipe out our only means of food. We’d been lucky so far. Since we started planting last year the weather had been right on the edge of disastrous without actually tipping that way.

“I knew that you’d be running behind so I saddled up Rusty for you,” Alejandro said as I walked down the porch’s stairs. Sure enough, Rusty and Bob, Alejandro’s horse, were hitched to the railing ready to go. Even though it had been almost two years since he did it, I still giggled a little at the name Bob. The horse was female, but Alejandro insisted that it be named Bob. I often wondered if it was an acronym for “Big ‘ol Bitch” but he’d never tell me why he chose that name.

“I’m not that late,” I replied.

“We were supposed to leave at dawn. Sun’s been up for twenty minutes.”

“Alright, you’ve got me then. I’m late,” I acquiesced. “Thank you for saddling the horses.”

“Sure. No problem—ungh,” he grunted as he swung himself into the saddle. I cinched my pack into place behind the saddle and climbed onto Rusty.

We rode slowly through the little town that had been our home for two years. I took in the details as we set an easy pace for the horses. The cracked glass above the church door, the wooden slat missing from the park bench in front of the old barber shop, the screen door on Ms. Johnson’s trailer that squeaked every time the wind blew all drew my gaze as we rode out of town. Even though I was excited about the trip, I felt like I was leaving the comfort of an old blanket on a cold morning.

We arrived at the northern gate and the guard hopped into the car that we’d positioned across the narrow opening. I heard the old transmission drop into neutral and then he stepped out and slowly pushed the car forward out of the way. I waved in thanks to him and then we were outside of town on the access road leading to Interstate 10.

Our trip was going to take us west along the old super-highway of I-10 to a town called Van Horn. Once we got there, we would take highway 54 north to 62, then west until we came to the turnoff for New El Paso. Jason couldn’t remember the name of the road, but Alejandro had been able to get a telepathic image of the location from Marcus. The old road sign had been partially obscured in the image, but it was fourteen thirty-something and new signs had been put up as an indication that this was the road to the city.

After we cross-referenced a map, I was certain that the town of New El Paso was probably just the old Dell City renamed. They had a few things going for them that a newly established town wouldn’t. First off, they had wells already dug for water. We didn’t really notice it in Balmorhea too much because of the nature park, but we were out on the edge of the deserts of the American southwest so water was everything. Second, there were already homes built there, so they wouldn’t have been starting totally from scratch. And the final reason I could think of was the storage facilities. Dell City had been a small producer of wheat in the desert region so they had massive storage silos which could hold all sorts of things for a new community trying to be the regional trading hub.

We made good time that first morning. The horses were fresh and we had to restrain them from running as we made our slow journey west. They seemed to be just as happy as we were to get out from behind the walls and into the open terrain beyond our town’s walls. The landscape stretched away before us with small hills on either side of the highway at varying distances. To the south lay old Mexico and to the north lay the rest of America…or whatever we were calling it these days.

We were about twenty miles out of town when I noticed a rider behind us on the road. We held up on the median and I pulled the small bird-watching binoculars from my bag. The rider was too far away to see his face, but I recognized the horse’s coloring and the clothing. “Son of a bitch,” I exclaimed in anger.

Alejandro looked at me funny so I handed him the binoculars. After a moment of adjusting the lenses to his weak eyesight he let out a soft chuckle. “You can hardly blame him,” he said. “This is a big adventure for a sixteen year old.”

“Fifteen,” I corrected my friend. “He’s still fifteen for two more months. Goddammit! How the hell did he get out of town with that horse?”

“Jackson’s a smart kid. He probably knows more ways out of town than we could ever imagine.”

“I should beat his ass,” I replied. Geez, I sounded just like my father. I swore to myself that when I had kids I would never be such a hard-ass like he’d been, but this world was so drastically different than the one I’d grown up in. Sure, growing up in Chicago had been dangerous as well, but out here in the wasteland there were a million and one things that could kill you.

“You’re not gonna do that and you know it,” Alejandro chided me quietly. “Besides, it will be good for him to get away from his sister for a while. Those two are too much alike and they fight like cats and dogs.”

I grunted in approval. I still wanted to spank him or punish him somehow, but I’d never raised a hand to our adopted son and I knew that I never would. “I hope he packed food for himself, otherwise we’re all gonna get pretty hungry.”

Alejandro just stared at me and I tried to discern the look that he was attempting to convey. His ruined face made the job extremely difficult, but I eventually figured out that he was going for, “No shit, Sherlock”.

“Okay, you’re right, buddy,” I said holding up my hands in defeat. “He’s a smart kid. Probably has more supplies than we do.” It was true. He and Jordyn had lived on their own for months after their parents were killed so he knew a thing or two about survival.

We waited a full fifteen minutes as his small shape grew and became more defined. When he got within a half of a mile, he spurred his horse into a trot and before long he was seated right in front of us. “Hi, Chuck. Hi, Alejandro,” he said sheepishly with a wave.

“What the hell are you doing out here, Jackson?” I asked. Even though I knew that I wouldn’t send him back, it was important to keep up appearances that this wasn’t acceptable behavior.

“I knew that you guys might need help,” he replied.

“Do you know how stupid it was coming out here alone? How the hell did you even get past the guards?”

He patted the rifle sling across his chest and said, “I can take care of myself, Chuck.”

“No you can’t, you’re just a kid,” I retorted.

He chose to ignore my little outburst and answered, “I only left about ten minutes after you, I went really slow for a while until we were far enough away from town that you wouldn’t send me back. I told the guard that I slept in and was supposed to meet you at the I-10 intersection and he let me out.”

“Well, when we get back I’m gonna have a talk with that guy,” I muttered.

Jackson’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean that I can come with you?” he asked excitedly.

Alejandro chuckled again beside me. I glanced at him and gave him a sour face. “You can’t go back by yourself, it would be dark before you made it back,” I replied.

“Yes!” he held up his hand for a high-five and out of the corner of my eye I saw Alejandro shake his head no. Jackson’s smile faltered and he dropped his hand. “Am I in trouble?”

“Of course you’re in trouble,” I said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. I mean, what am I gonna do, put you in time out on your horse? Let’s get going.” I turned around and took the lead heading westward. I grinned a little to myself when I heard Jackson’s hand softly slap Alejandro’s.

* * *

We reached the town of Van Horn around dusk the next day. It was far enough away from El Paso and the army base outside the city that it shouldn’t have taken a direct hit, but the town looked like it had been wiped out by a nuclear bomb. More than half of the buildings were nothing but skeletal remains and almost no structures that weren’t made of brick remained. There weren’t very many cars of any kind, and those that did remain had been stripped of most of their parts.

“What in the hell?” I muttered.

“Scavengers I’d bet,” Alejandro answered. “We’re only about a hundred miles or so from El Paso. If the people trying to scrape out a life in the wasteland over there didn’t take the stuff, I’d bet it was scooped up by the people from New El Paso. We’re only about ninety miles from there. With a few hundred workers and some flatbed trucks, they could have easily stripped this place of all the building material.”

I tried to think back to what Jason had said about the size of New El Paso, but I couldn’t remember how large it was. The old
Road Atlas
that we were using said that Dell City only had a population of about six hundred people. Its pre-war size was hardly big enough for a large trading post, so it would make sense that they would need construction material for housing. If there had been readily accessible water in Van Horn, it would have made more sense to set up the trading post here, but the underground water that was available at Dell City must have forced the decision. That or circumstances that we had no way of knowing put the people there.

“I hope it was only the people from New El Paso and not something else that did this,” I grumbled aloud.

“We need to find a place to shelter for the night,” Alejandro replied. “It looks like there might be some brick buildings near the center of town that haven’t been torn down.”

I pulled out the binoculars and examined where Alejandro was pointing. Sure enough there were several brick buildings that still had all four walls, but it looked like the roofs had already been taken. “Okay, let’s go up there and hope no one is home,” I answered.

We slowly walked the horses towards the nearest brick structure, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. I told my traveling companions what I felt and Alejandro tried to make mental contact with anyone in the area. He shook his head and said, “If there is someone around who can hear me, they’re not answering back. But I’m still new to this telepathy thing, so I may be doing it wrong or there may be some type of range limit that I don’t know about.”

We decided to make camp in an old convenience store and we circled around it a couple of times to make sure that we weren’t missing anything. When we were satisfied, Alejandro and I dismounted and went to the empty doorway while Jackson held onto our horses’ reins. Whoever had picked this place apart had already taken the door so it was only a matter of stepping inside. I powered on my mini flashlight and shone it inside. A quick glance skyward showed that they’d taken parts of the roof and not others.

The little light illuminated the area immediately in front of me, but not much else. “Hello?” I called softly into the gloom. “Is anyone in here?”

I called out a few more times without any answers so Alejandro and I split up. He went to the right and I went to the left. His night vision was good enough that he didn’t need the flashlight, but he still picked his way very cautiously through the store. Broken glass from the refrigerated section crunched underfoot as I walked around examining the place to make sure that no one else was in there with us.

They’d taken almost everything from the store. The only things that I could tell that remained were the ATM box, the cash register and the metal shelves for displaying products. Everything else was either missing or smashed on the ground. What I could only imagine to be feces was smeared along the hallway walls leading to the bathrooms, but thankfully the smell had long since dissipated. I could make out three massive handprints and all four fingers as the trail ran from the handprints to the back door.