The Day After Never - Blood Honor (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller) (16 page)

When Carl and Alan had failed to show at the prearranged time, he’d set off, resigned to making the trek on his own. A gibbous moon had risen in the night sky, illuminating the trail sufficiently for him to make his way, and when they’d finally hit the secondary road after crossing the highway with its rusting carcasses ghostly in the moonlight, he’d exhaled a long sigh of relief. The way from here was familiar and relatively safe; the area wasn’t claimed by either the Raiders or the Loco Cartel, there being nothing of real value other than Loving and Carlsbad, both of which were fortified and guarded by a citizenry that knew how to use its weapons.

As dawn approached, he heard the thunder of hooves from the west – a large party of riders traveling south on the highway half a mile away. He slowed, and Tango eyed the horizon with him as he swung his M4 up and looked through the night vision scope. The riders were too far off to make out any detail, but he guessed there must be about a hundred.

He’d never seen such numbers, and a coil of anxiety twisted tight in his gut. Why would a group that size be on the highway at night? The only things that occurred to him were bad and worse, and he clicked at Tango, who resumed his march, showing no indication of fatigue even after a brutal three days.

Lucas’s worst fears were realized as he approached Loving an hour and a half later as the sun rose through a line of clouds over the eastern plains. Columns of inky smoke were curling into the peach sky from the town, and as he neared the fortifications, he could see the gate blown off its hinges, scorch marks from grenades blackening the walls on either side. No guards were standing watch, and Eve squirmed against him at the sight of the smoldering buildings.

“What…?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” he answered, but flipped the safety off his M4. He raised his binoculars and took in the devastation, and then guided Tango to a tree and dismounted.

Lucas’s face was all angular planes, his eyes narrowed to slits as he tied the reins to a low branch and helped Eve down. “Stay here with Tango. I’ll be back soon,” he said, his voice low.

“Where are you going? Where’s Aunt Sierra? Is she here?”

“That’s what I’m going to see.” He unpacked the last of the dried fruit and handed it to Eve along with another bottle of water. “Don’t give Tango all of it. You’ll spoil him.”

She nodded mutely, eyes even larger than usual, and Lucas knelt down so his head was even with hers. “Don’t follow me in. I promise I’ll come back, but you have to promise to stay put. Even Steven. Deal?”

“What if someone comes?”

“Hide. I won’t be long.”

“What about Tango?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“I mean if someone comes?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucas said, eyes on the town. “He can take care of himself.”

That ended the exchange, and Lucas set off toward the gate, the M4 cool in his hands. When he reached the barrier, he studied the craters and the damage to the area around it and spat. Probably grenades, he guessed, which meant that the attackers had come loaded for bear.

The wall by the guard outpost was riddled with bullet scars, telling the entire story of the attack at a glance. He passed through the gate and spotted a body face down in the dirt in a black pool of congealed blood. He continued past more corpses, their weapons gone, no doubt taken by their killers. Ahead he saw a flash of color, and he swallowed back the acid that rose in his mouth. It was a little girl’s dress, the toddler bloating in the sun, a bullet wound in her temple offering mute testimony to the ruthlessness of the attackers.

Everywhere he looked, the dead lay sprawled, most of them townspeople he recognized, and some the attackers, he presumed by their dress. He slowly took in the ruined homes, many burned to the ground, only their chimneys still standing, and he spied someone he didn’t know. The man was clad in a black leather vest, his arms covered with full-sleeve tattoos and his head shaved, and was obviously dead, given the cloud of bluebottle flies clustered on his face. As Lucas approached the figure, he spotted the prison ink – a crude trident that represented Satan’s pitchfork and which established him as a member of the Loco Cartel.

“Damn,” Lucas whispered.

One of the eventualities the town had discussed was a coordinated move by the Locos, but it had always been dismissed over time as unrealistic – the cartel needed the goods Loving produced, and trade was the best way to get them. A raid would be a onetime event, and then the supply would end. The town leadership had gambled that the cartel wouldn’t cut off its nose to spite its face, and years of no belligerence had lulled everyone into the belief that the savages would stay in Pecos and not spread their evil contagion.

The destruction of the town proved that to have been a fatal bet.

But why attack now? What had triggered it?

Nearby, another stranger was curled in a fetal position, a small river of blood running from his torso. Lucas studied the man, who was dressed differently than the cartel killer, his head also shaved except for a long black braided patch at the crown of his head.

Lucas toed the man’s head to get a better look and recoiled with a sharp intake of breath at the tattoos that covered his face, lending him the appearance of a demon – which, based on the massacre, wasn’t far from the truth. As far as he knew, the Locos didn’t ink their faces, so who was he? And what, if anything, did it mean? Another killer, perhaps a former inmate of the Pecos prison, who’d been affiliated with a different gang? That was what it looked like, but Lucas was speculating – and in the end it hardly mattered. The damage was done.

He continued past the carnage to the doctor’s house, not a creature stirring in the rubble. Inside, the doctor lay facedown with two bullet wounds in his back. His medicine cabinet and drug refrigerator had been raided, his radio smashed to bits, his beloved piano lay in pieces, the cat lay near the window with its head canted at an impossible angle. Lucas drew a long breath, the air heavy with the peculiar copper stench of blood, and then shouldered through the closed patient room door, already resigned to what he would find.

He drew up short when the wooden slab swung wide.

The room was empty.

That there had been a struggle was clear – the wooden chair was knocked over and the furniture in disarray – but Sierra was gone.

Maybe she’d heard the shooting and bolted, managed to escape the senseless slaughter? She was a survivor from Dallas, a city that was actively dangerous under the Crew’s rule, so perhaps her instincts were more finely tuned than the townspeople’s had been?

He had no explanation, and it wasn’t like him to jump to conclusions. He did a quick search of the room and found the antibiotics Sierra had been taking, the plastic bottle tossed in a corner. Lucas pocketed them and then backed away and returned to the living room to stand over the doctor.

“I’m truly sorry, my friend. You deserved better,” he whispered, and then offered an all-too-familiar prayer for the dead, ending with a soft “Amen.”

Lucas retraced his steps back outside, noting that the doctor’s house was one of the few that hadn’t been burned, and then realized that it had more to do with the materials it had been built with than with anything significant in the cartel’s approach. His was one of the oldest homes in town, constructed from cinder block in the 1930s, before sheetrock and studs had come into fashion after WWII. The house had been designed to withstand anything nature threw at it, and it had, although now there would be nobody to appreciate it.

Twenty minutes later Lucas returned to where Tango and Eve were waiting, his expression guarded under the brim of his hat.

“Where’s Aunt Sierra?” Eve asked.

“Not here.”

Eve edged closer. “I heard something over there,” she said, pointing into the brush.

Lucas pushed her aside, placing himself between her and any threat, and raised the M4, the fire selector switch clicking to sustained fire with an audible click.

A female voice called from the dense vegetation growing along the top of the riverbank. “Don’t shoot.”

“Come out with your hands up,” Lucas growled. “No second chances.”

The bushes rustled and a woman with flowing gray hair, a faded T-shirt, and loose-fitting woven cloth pants stepped out. “Lucas! I didn’t see you clearly. These old eyes…”

“Ruby!”

“Isn’t it awful?” she whispered, glancing at Eve, who was peeking from around one of Lucas’s legs.

“That’s not the word for it.”

“I know. I heard the shooting all the way out at my place. When it stopped, I came to investigate.” She paused, words inadequate. “The devil walked the earth today.”

“No argument.”

“God rest their souls.” Ruby lived three miles from town, an eccentric nature woman who subsisted by trading the specialized herbs she grew. Hal had known her for years, and the pair got along well, his dry delivery and deadpan sense of humor perfectly matched by Ruby’s rapier wit and keen intellect.

Lucas nodded. “I heard their horses headed south.”

“Yes. They came last night, late, and spent all night…” Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat. “They rode away about two hours ago.”

“Nobody left to abuse.” Lucas stopped. “Wait. Did you see them?”

She nodded. “I was hiding over here. I thought it was over, so I came to check, and then there were more shots, so I hunkered down here.”

“Tell me what you saw, Ruby.”

“They were…animals. No. Worse than that. Animals don’t inflict cruelty for fun.” She paused. “Everyone’s…everyone’s gone, aren’t they?”

Lucas’s expression told her everything she wanted to know, and more.

“I saw them ride off. Too many to count.”

“Did you go into town?”

Ruby shook her head. “No. I…I can guess. I heard the screams. Mothers begging for mercy for their children, kids crying…” Her voice was barely audible. “It was…it will stay with me forever, Lucas. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Did they take any prisoners?”

“No, they just…” Her brow furrowed, and then her eyes widened. “Wait. That’s not right. They did leave with a woman. I didn’t recognize her, though. I thought I knew all the townspeople, but…”

“What was she wearing?”

“Some kind of man’s coat, I think. Maybe some kind of shorts? Why? Is it important?”

Lucas’s breathing was ragged. Had he inflicted this abomination on the town by bringing Sierra to Loving? It didn’t make any sense. She had nothing to do with the cartel.

Assuming she’d told him the complete truth.

Ruby’s face changed as she looked over Lucas’s shoulder, past the town, toward the horizon. Lucas slowly turned and followed her gaze.

Another spire of smoke was rising into the sky in the near distance. From the east.

Ruby took a step closer and pointed a shaking finger. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “Is that…?”

Lucas’s expression darkened and his hand whitened on the M4 stock. “Looks like it’s coming from…”

Ruby’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no.”

Lucas nodded.

“The ranch.”

Chapter 23

Lucas pushed Tango as hard as he dared while Ruby followed behind him a fair distance on her mule, Jax, with Eve seated in front of her. Lucas had asked Ruby to mind the child, unsure what he would find when he arrived, but wanting to be prepared for anything – including full-scale war.

He gasped when he arrived at the gate, which, like that guarding the town, had also been blown apart, and jumped down from Tango, M4 at the ready. The barn was nothing more than a charred husk, its frame blackened and the planks burned away. Nine bodies littered the perimeter – cartel, by their appearance. The air was heavy with the odor of ash, and Lucas’s heart trip-hammered in his chest as he surveyed the grounds before heading into the house.

The heavy front door was ajar, and when he stepped inside, a low moan escaped from his lips. His grandfather was lying by the gun safe, his lever-action Winchester and one of the shotguns beside him, half the rounds gone from an ammo box by the window. He’d been shot a half dozen times, and had gone hard, by the look of him, dealing out more than the attackers had bargained for right to the end.

Lucas knelt beside him, tears streaming down his face, and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Hal. I should have been here. I…” His voice trailed off, ending in a strangled sob, and he sat back, shoulders sagging, grieving for the man who’d made him what he was, who’d taught him right from wrong, who had counseled him and reproached him and celebrated his successes like Lucas was his own son.

That these monsters had seen fit to attack an eighty-three-year-old man and destroy his life’s work, after he’d survived everything the planet could throw at him…

“They’ll pay,” Lucas promised, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’ll send them to hell. Every one of them.”

Lucas shuddered again at the sight of Hal’s body, and then he drew a long breath. That wasn’t his grandfather. That was just the shell he’d occupied, the container that had housed his spirit, nothing more. Hal was not that bit of carbon and water, that jumble of genes and synapses. That was merely the vehicle Hal had used, and now he was done with it, its purpose served.

Lucas slowly rose to his feet and moved to the photos scattered across the floor. He leaned over and lifted the one of his father in his Ranger garb and slid it inside his flak vest, the pain in his heart a ragged wound.

Why had they done this? They’d had to go out of their way and had paid a heavy toll to take the ranch. What possible purpose had it served?

Realization dawned on him. They hadn’t come for Hal or the ranch.

“They came for me,” he whispered. The words were an indictment. Everyone in town had believed that he’d refused to go look for the girl. That he’d gone back to the ranch and was sleeping off his adventure. He hadn’t even told the doctor he was going to meet Carl and Alan, only asked whether they’d left.

But why come for him? The question had only one answer: because he, and he alone, knew where he’d rescued Sierra. Even she didn’t. She’d been unconscious.