Wall: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 3) (2 page)

Battle waved his weapon at the body on the ground. “And you killed this Dweller here?”

Pierce had his eyes on the gun. “Something like that.”

“Just killed him. No reason.”

Pierce shuddered against the cold. Rain sprayed from his lips as he spat. “Who the hell are you to judge which side is right and which is wrong? You’re a homeless vigilante. You—”

The single shot from Battle’s nine millimeter was hidden by the throaty roar of thunder rolling through the gypsum, shale, and sandstone walls, but it traveled straight into Pierce’s open mouth and dropped him where he stood.

“Homeless vigilante?” asked Battle. He stepped toward the pair of bodies on the flooding canyon floor and crouched down. He looked into Pierce’s eyes. “Something like that.”

CHAPTER TWO

OCTOBER 25, 2037, 3:00 AM

SCOURGE +5 YEARS

PALO DURO CANYON, TEXAS

Battle tossed the satellite phone onto the wood-planked table in front of Juliana Paagal. It slid to the edge and came to a rest between her elbows. Paagal was leaning forward, her chin resting on the knuckles of her folded hands.

She was a regal woman who carried herself with quiet dignity. Her ink-black short hair gave her a youthful appearance that belied her age. Her coffee-colored skin blended with the light brown sleeveless top hanging on her narrow shoulders.

Paagal, as she’d asked Battle to call her, had welcomed the weary travelers without question. She trusted fellow Dweller Baadal’s judgment as her own.

She and Battle were alone in her large ten-person tent. The rain was constant and deafening against the tent’s red nylon walls. There was a lone light hanging from the center pitch of the large space Paagal called her home. A bare mattress and lumpy feather pillow sat atop a futon in one corner, a threadbare wool sofa in another. An orange extension cord snaked its way across the dirt floor and provided enough electricity to power the light and a hot plate perched on one side of the table.

“So you were right,” she said, her ice blue eyes staring unblinkingly at Battle without lowering them to look at the satellite phone. “He was a spy.”

“I apologize for bringing him here,” said Battle. “It’s my fault.”

Paagal shook her head and smiled. Her eyes narrowed as she spoke. “It was not your fault, Marcus. I am the one who allowed you here. The blame rests with me.”

“He killed one of your sentries,” said Battle. “It happened inside a communications bunker a couple of miles from here. I wasn’t trailing close enough to stop him.”

“Ahhh,” she said, lowering her arms and nodding. “That would be Sahaayak. He was a good helper. We will miss his kindness and his soul.”

Battle nodded at the phone. “Take a look at that,” he said. “Pierce used it to call the Cartel. I’m guessing he was giving them intelligence about your two-way radio system.”

The smile evaporated from Paagal’s face. “Where is Pierce?” she asked. “I can ask him directly what he was doing. I’d rather not make any assumptions.”

Battle hesitated and bit the inside of his cheek. “He’s dead.”

Paagal cupped a hand behind her ear, catching the large wooden hoop hanging from the lobe. “He’s what?”

The slap of the rain on the nylon made it hard to carry on a conversation, especially given that Battle didn’t really want Paagal to hear him. “I killed him,” he said above the din.

Paagal nodded. “I see.”

“I shot him. His body is next to Saya—”

Paagal spoke slowly, a syllable at a time. “Sa-ha-a-yak.”

“Sahaayak,” Battle said. “They’re maybe a quarter mile from the bunker.”

“Well—” Paagal sighed “—I’ll go ahead and make an assumption then. I’ll assume your life was in danger and you had no choice but to defend yourself. Otherwise, killing Pierce would have been a reckless and cruel act unbefitting a man who, up until now, I’ve given great respect. You’re former military. You know the value of a prisoner who has information to impart voluntarily…or involuntarily, especially given all of the extra Cartel patrols we’ve spotted nearing the rim.”

Battle pulled out a chair and sat down at the table across from Paagal. He leaned in, his forearms resting on the rough-hewn wood. “My life wasn’t in danger. I wish I could say it was self-defense. I think I lost that impulse-control mechanism a while ago.”

Paagal leaned back in her chair and folded her long, lean arms across her chest. Her biceps flexed as she adjusted herself. “As you judged Pierce, I should not judge you,” she said with more than a hint of irony. “We all learn to function, to cope in different ways. Yours is to kill at the hint of a threat. I see a man who struggles with his own darkness. You see the light. You want to live in the light. But the dark is more comfortable for you, so you slink into its embrace at every opportunity.”

Battle laughed. “You were a shrink before the Scourge, weren’t you?”

Paagal nodded. A smile spread across her face. “You might consider I am still a shrink,” she said. “Being a leader requires the effective use of psychology.”

Battle scowled. “So what now?”

“I suppose I should ask you that question,” Paagal said. “You arrived here a week ago. You’ve recovered from your injuries. Your woman, Lola, is—”

“She’s not my woman,” said Battle.

Paagal’s eyebrows arched with doubt. She raised her hands in surrender. “Whatever you say. Your friend Lola is again walking without a limp. Her son seems healthy.”

“Your point?”

“We’ve not discussed your plans,” she said. “You are our guests for as long as you like,” her voice lilted.

“But…?”

“But,” she continued, “there is a war coming. You are a soldier.”

“I
was
a soldier.”

“Semantics, Mr. Battle,” she replied. “Do you plan to help us? Our common enemy is knocking at our door.”

Battle squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be honest,” he said, “I need to get to the wall.”

“The wall.”

“The wall,” he repeated. “Lola and Sawyer need a fresh start, as fresh as can be had in this wasteland.”

“And you?”

Battle shrugged. “I don’t know about me. But I need to get them there.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re looking for a quid pro quo,” said Paagal. “You help us. We help you. I know Baadal discussed with you the wall and what may lie beyond.”

“He didn’t tell me what was on the other side,” Battle said. “I know the Cartel doesn’t exist north, east, or west of it.”

Juliana Paagal stared at Battle without saying anything for several minutes. Battle felt as if she were taking some sort of psychic inventory, taking mental notes without permission. He sat there, staring back at her, trying not to give away anything.

“Here’s what I want from you, Marcus Battle,” she said. “You help us defeat the Cartel, or degrade them such that they dare not attack us again, and we will help you find your way beyond the wall.”

Battle shook his head. “You can’t beat them,” he said. “They’re not only here. They’re everywhere. Abilene. Houston. Dallas. San Antonio. Austin. Galveston. You know that better than I.”

“That man, Pierce, the one you brought here is not the only spy,” she said. “We too have the ability to infiltrate.”

“Really.” It was less a question and more a doubtful dismissive.

“Ever since the truce,” she said, “we’ve been dispatching cells. They’ve lived and worked amongst the Cartel in those cities you mention. They’ve painstakingly recruited allies. All of them are ready to pounce when we signal them. We can end the Cartel. You’ve come at the right time.”

“Or the wrong time.” He sighed. “You’re talking about war.”

Paagal pressed her lips together. She scratched her left bicep and nodded. “I prefer to call it an insurrection or a revolution.”

“Semantics,” he said.

“Touché.”

“So you can beat the Cartel?”

“We believe so,” she said. “The time is upon us.”

“Then once the Cartel is beaten,” Battle said, leaning in, “I won’t need your help.”

“Yes, you will,” she said. “The Cartel is the largest, vilest of the organized groups to emerge after the Scourge. But they are not the only one. There are pockets of thieves and killers who live along the wall, who worm from one side of it to the other, feeding off of those who would cross it. You will need our help.”

Battle leaned back. He nodded. He knew he had no choice in the matter. “For being such a proclaimed pacifist, you seem eager to fight,” Battle observed. “Seems hypocritical.”

“Does it?” Paagal asked, her expression unchanged.

“I’m violent for the sake of violence,” he said. “Though I don’t like it, I admit it. It’s my cross to bear.” Battle thought about how he hadn’t prayed in days. He was losing his religion in the wilds of the untamed landscape that surrounded him. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten to pray. He didn’t feel like it.

“Interesting self-awareness,” said Paagal. “I would counter your assertion by suggesting I am for violence only because nonviolence means we continue postponing a solution.”

“Paraphrasing Malcolm X, are you?” Battle asked.

A sly grin crept across Paagal’s face, her magically white teeth aglow in the red hue of the tent. “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery,” she said. “By any means necessary.”

CHAPTER THREE

OCTOBER 25, 2037, 7:49 AM

SCOURGE +5 YEARS

HOUSTON, TEXAS

Ana Montes was late. She hurried down the frozen escalator, her right hand sliding along the rubber railing as she descended into the darkness, her feet clomping on the aluminum steps. Even in the blackness of the underground tunnel, she knew where she was and where she needed to be. Ana stepped off the escalator threshold twenty feet below what remained of downtown Houston, Texas, and took fifteen steps straight ahead before turning ninety degrees to the right. Her footsteps echoed against the walls of the six-mile-long tunnel system, and she made another ninety-degree turn.

She could hear the hushed voices of the others. They’d begun without her. She took a deep breath and pushed her way into the room. It was lit with LED flashlights illuminating the faces of the dozen men and women who crowded around a map on a table. All of them looked up at her when she slid into the room.

“You’re late,” growled the man at the center of the group. “We had to begin without you.”

“I couldn’t get away,” she said breathlessly and found her spot at the table. From her perspective, the map was upside down. She was opposite the man in charge.

His name was Sidney Reilly. Everyone called him Sid. He was the one who’d recruited most of them to join the Dwellers’ resistance.

His eyes lingered on Ana as he spoke. “As I was saying,” he huffed, “we are getting close. Within a day, maybe two, we’ll begin. Our job—”

“That soon?” Ana interrupted. “A day or two? I don’t think—”

Sid’s eyes narrowed; the shadows cast from the flashlight deepened across his furrowed brow. “I didn’t ask what you think. We move when we move. You’re either with us or you’re not, Ana.”

Ana shrank back from the table, trying to lessen the burn from the eyes glaring at her. She nodded and bit her lower lip. “I’m with you.”

Sid nodded and continued the briefing. Ana wasn’t listening. She was looking at the men and women flanking her to either side. One by one, Sid had convinced each of them the Cartel’s rule was coming to an end. All it would take was enough people to rise up. The ones at the table bought what he was selling.

Each of them then recruited their own cadre of revolutionaries. Those people, in turn, recruited another group. It was an uprising’s equivalent of multilevel marketing, and it provided for a stopgap plausible deniability should any one person flip or be discovered by the Cartel.

In all, Sid estimated they had as many as five thousand people on board. That number, they all knew, paled in comparison to Cartel loyalists. But under the right circumstances they were large enough to deliver crippling blows to the despots in charge of their city.

Next to Sid was Nancy Wake. She was a Cartel bookkeeper who had access to the locations and depth of their provisions, illicit drugs, weapons, transportation, and other holdings. Her husband, Wendell, was a disillusioned posse boss. Together, they were the deepest penetration into the Cartel’s Houston structure.

The others around the table were a mixture of grunts, urban farmers, and shopkeepers. They offered a variety of skills and insight the revolutionaries would need if they had any chance of succeeding when the time came. The time was coming fast, too fast for Ana Montes.

Ana looked at the map of Texas. It was marked with intersecting blue and red lines. Arrows marked the direction of movements. Large and small circles indicated the revolutionaries’ strength in numbers at various locations. Close to Ana, in an area near Amarillo, Palo Duro Canyon was highlighted in fluorescent yellow.

It all seemed to be too much. She’d signed on with the belief that the revolt against the Cartel was a nebulous pipe dream unlikely to ever come to fruition. She’d agreed to do things she never thought she’d actually have to do. Now she stared at the reality of the impending action and her pulse quickened. Her knees weakened. Beads of sweat bloomed on her forehead and above her upper lip.

“Are you okay, Ana?” Nancy Wake asked, interrupting Sid. “You don’t look good.”

Ana leaned on the table, locking her elbows for support, and she nodded. She felt the return of everyone’s glare. “I’m okay,” she said. “I…”

Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “You what?”

Ana inhaled deeply and wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand. “I just…this is suicide, isn’t it? I don’t see how we can beat them. Their numbers are too great. They have too many weapons.”

“What are you saying?” Sid asked, his head tilted to the side. Others mumbled their concerns about Ana’s doubts. Sid raised his hand to quiet them.

“I think they’ll slaughter us,” she admitted. “I don’t want to die or end up a slave.”

Sid laughed condescendingly. “We’re already slaves, Ana. They already control most aspects of our lives. We didn’t choose them as masters.”