Wall: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 3) (20 page)

Battle crouched in front of the creek. It was deep enough that he could see the moon over his shoulder. His own filthy reflection stared back at him. “So what are you saying?” he asked. Sylvia’s image appeared in the water, displacing his own. She was as beautiful as he remembered. She was as she looked in the photograph he carried in his pocket, the photograph he’d risked his life to save from the fire that consumed their house two weeks earlier.

“I’m not saying anything, Marcus,” she told him. “I’m not here. My voice is your voice. You know that. You know I’m only telling you the things you don’t want to admit to yourself.”

Battle dipped his fingers into the cold running water. Expanding outward, the ripples distorted Sylvia’s face. By the time they’d dissipated, a different face was smiling back at him. Sylvia was gone. The visage reflected in the water was Lola’s.

Battle squeezed his eyes shut and wiggled his fingers in the water, trying to erase her. He couldn’t. She was there.

“You’re not crazy, Marcus,” she whispered, her voice blending with the rushing water. “But if you don’t forgive yourself for things you’ve done, or didn’t do, you’ll drive yourself insane with regret.”

Battle drew his cold, shivering hands to his face and quietly sobbed into them. His tears mixed with the creek water and the remnants of rain that dripped from his hair. His chest shuddered as he cried.

He wept for his mistakes, for his miscalculations, for his arrogance. He mourned the Syrian named Nizar who’d sacrificed his own life to lead him and Rufus Buck to safety, the churchgoing woman who’d infected his son and wife with the Scourge, and his inability to protect any of them. He shed tears for Sylvia and Sawyer, for Lola’s husband, and for Pico. He cried for himself, for his own lack of humanity and loss of faith.

The sudden knowledge that Rufus Buck was General Roof was a gut punch Marcus Battle greatly needed. It clarified his purpose. He would stop looking back.

He would miss his wife and son for the entirety of his life. If he ever returned to his home, he would visit their graves. But he resolved at the edge of the rising creek to put the man he had been behind him.

If he was going to live in this new world and survive, he had to get out of his own head. He had to trust again. He’d have to find joy where it existed, and forge happiness where it did not. He had to love again.

And above all else, he had to kill the man responsible for the Cartel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

OCTOBER 26, 2037, 3:55 AM

SCOURGE +5 YEARS

DALLAS, TEXAS

Ana tore at the jerky with her teeth. It was dry and leathery, but she was hungry. It was her fourth piece, the last in the saddlebag aboard her horse. There were a couple of canteens, a blanket roll, and a Smith & Wesson .357 double action revolver with a cinched pouch full of ammunition.

She’d ridden up the interstate more than sixty miles, somehow maneuvering the well-trained paint at a steady trot. She’d almost fallen off a couple of times, managing to keep her balance.

Penny was on her chest The rhythmic bounce of the horse had put the baby back to sleep. After all her misfortune in the last day, Penny’s exhaustion was a blessing.

The child was stuffed into the backpack Ana had used to carry baby supplies. Ana had stuffed the Vaseline and extra diapers into the saddlebag. She’d used a folding jackknife she’d found on another horse and sawed two leg holes into the bottom of the pack.

She drew the straps tight and wore the pack against her chest, the baby sitting inside and facing forward, her legs dangling from the holes.

Ana saw Dallas from miles away. There was power in the city. She could see the lights flickering on and off. She wondered whether it was a mirage or whether the electricity was as spotty as it had been in Houston.

The horse kept a steady pace, its shoes clopping on the highway toward the city. Ana wondered if she was better off avoiding the city, but it was the fastest route to where she needed to be. On horseback, she figured she’d need to ride another fifteen hours. If she stayed on the highway, she and Penny would be fine.

On her approach, the city gleamed to the left. It wasn’t as impressive as Houston’s skyline, even in their varying degrees of disrepair. Ana rubbed the top of Penny’s bouncing head with her hand, feeling the fine soft strands of hair. She kept her eyes forward and used her tongue to suck the remnant pieces of jerky from her teeth.

The highway was elevated twenty feet above the ground below. Above her was what was left of a highway directional sign. It was bent and sheared at the bottom.

Ana cranked the flashlight and aimed it at the reflective green face of the sign. She’d been using the light to make sure she was headed in the right direction.

The sign read BRYAN STREET. That didn’t mean anything to Ana. She wasn’t from Dallas and hadn’t ever spent any time there, except when Logan had taken her to look at motorcycles.

There were Cartel outfits who used high-efficiency cycles to deliver messages and other things of importance. They were like a Pony Express, Logan had explained.

The Dwellers had always told her the motorcycle gangs were ruthless criminals. They were delivery boys and girls, but also high-RPM killers who could maneuver the wilderness of north and far west Texas faster than horses and more nimbly than Humvees or trucks. They typically hung close to the wall and traveled in packs.

Ana bounced in the saddle with the horse’s trot. She wasn’t a good enough rider to employ a full gallop. If she could find a motorcycle, though, she might be able to make it to Palo Duro before it was too late. It was a long shot. She had little recollection of where they’d been.

Ana kicked her heels into the horse’s sides and it picked up its pace after snorting its disagreement. She read the overhead signs as they bounced along underneath them. Nothing looked familiar.

She took a deep breath and took the next exit ramp down into the city. Maybe from the surface streets, she would recognize where they’d seen the motorcycles.

No sooner she’d made the descent into the city than she regretted it. Gunfire popped in the near distance. Men and women screamed, children were crying. The sounds echoed and bounced off the high buildings that lined the streets.

Ana smelled smoke and burning rubber. She pulled her shirt up over her nose and draped a cloth diaper over her sleeping baby’s head. Her eyes stung from the acrid smoke. She tugged on the reins to slow the horse and rubbed its neck.

At an intersection two blocks up, a man on fire ran into the street. He collapsed to his knees, howling, and rolled on the ground in a vain attempt to put out the skin-searing flames. A trio following him put him out of his misery with a barrage of gunfire.

Ana didn’t know who was who. Was the Cartel winning? Were the Dwellers taking control of the city?

It didn’t matter. Both were her enemies.

One of the men in the intersection pointed at Ana, and the other two looked her way. She couldn’t see their faces from such a distance. Even the dim lights that gave the street a yellow glow from their perch atop curbside poles didn’t reveal who they were.

Ana stopped the horse and tried to get it to turn around. The men were shouting. Two of them were running toward her.

Ana tugged on the reins. She jerked the horse’s head to the left. It resisted. Penny lifted her head and yanked the diaper from her face. She sucked in a deep breath and started crying.

The men were getting closer. The horse stepped back and snorted, shaking its head. Ana tried yanking the reins to the right. She slammed her heels inward. Nothing.

Penny’s cry grew louder as if she’d spun a dial and turned up the volume. Ana reared back and tugged again.

One of the men shouted, “Who are you? Hey! Stop!”

They kept coming. They were less than a block from her.

“She has a baby!” one of them yelled.

“Don’t shoot her,” another said. It was too late.

One of the other two fired a pair of shots. Neither of them hit Ana, Penny, or the horse, but it spooked all three of them.

The horse reared back onto its hind legs. Ana grabbed at the saddle’s horn as she slid backward. Penny’s weight drew Ana to one side and they barely stayed aboard the animal.

It returned to all four hooves and began a gallop straight toward the three men. They gave the horse a wide berth.

She raced past them without any of the three firing another shot while Ana struggled to stay squarely in the saddle. Penny’s cries reverberated with the bounce as they put more space between themselves and the trio, riding deeper into the chaos.

The horse slowed to turn left, picking up speed as it raced out of the turn. Ana clung to the horse, fighting the inertia as the animal sprinted along the street. They galloped past the grotesque vignettes playing out on corners and spilling out of doorways onto the streets, the violence an indiscriminate blur.

Ana tugged on the reins to slow the horse, to try to gain some sort of control over its speed and direction. It kept chugging forward, huffing through flared nostrils, until it grew tired and slowed to a walk without any coaxing from Ana.

Penny was still crying, her wails interrupted by deep, ragged breaths. Ana pulled her closer to her chest, her hand wrapped around the backpack, and whispered into her daughter’s ear.

“It’s okay, baby,” she cooed. “Shhhh. Shhhhh. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Penny flung her hand at Ana’s face and a finger caught her mother in the eye. Ana reflexively pulled back and pressed her hand to the sting.

Blinking away the welling tears, Ana noticed a white building with a bright red awning to her right. Above the awning was a building-length panel that bore the name of the shop: DUCATI AMS DALLAS.

It was a motorcycle retailer. Ana rubbed her eye and smiled. She looked over both shoulders. She seemed to have distanced herself from the battle being waged downtown.

She guided the horse to a wooden utility pole at the right edge of the darkened showroom and carefully hopped off the horse, tying its reins to the pole. Ana took a canteen and a bowl from one side of the saddlebag. She poured water into the bowl and put it on the ground in front of the horse.

She took a swig of the water herself before stuffing it back into the saddlebag. Ana had the .357 tucked in her waistband. The assault rifle was strapped inside a makeshift scabbard underneath the saddle. She looked at it and considered bringing it, but didn’t. She had six shots with the .357. It was either enough or it wasn’t.

Penny was whimpering, though her cries had subsided. Ana cranked the flashlight and aimed it at the glass windows that covered most of the one-story façade. The tint on the window reflected the LED beam. She couldn’t see anything inside the windows. She’d have to find a way in and hope there was a faster, less irritable form of transportation awaiting her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

OCTOBER 26, 2037, 4:35 AM

SCOURGE +5 YEARS

FM 1541, 12 MILES WEST OF PALO DURO CANYON, TEXAS

The rifle shots struck the front window of the Humvee. Two of them found Porky’s chest. He looked at Roof, his eyes large and drawn together with confusion, his mouth agape. His hands dropped from the wheel and his right foot dropped heavier onto the gas pedal as he slumped in his seat.

Roof ducked at the sound of glass shattering and grabbed his SCAR 17 from the floorboard. He was stuck between the hard dash and his seat as the Humvee lurched and accelerated forward.

The gunfire shifted from twelve o’clock to the vehicle’s nine o’clock until Roof was slammed violently against the dash. He looked up in time to see Porky’s body flip awkwardly and launch through the windshield. The grunt’s feet caught on the steering wheel and kept his body attached to the vehicle.

Roof looked behind him, trying to unwedge himself from the floor, and saw Skinner standing in the bed, returning fire. Dalton had his back to Skinner’s and was unloading his weapon in the opposite direction.

Roof struggled free and, staying low, pushed on the passenger’s side door, but it met with resistance. It wouldn’t fully open. Still, Roof squeezed himself through the narrow gap between the door and the Humvee’s frame and pulled his SCAR 17 behind him.

The Humvee was smashed against a cluster of tall red cedar trees between the farm-to-market road and two lanes of asphalt that ran parallel to the highway before taking a sharp dogleg to the right toward the canyon. One of the low-hanging branches was lodged between the door and another tree. Roof snaked himself across the branch, scratching his face.

The rapid fire of the attackers was deafening. They were close and they were heavily armed. There was no space along the passenger side of the vehicle.

Roof ducked his head, losing his hat, and crawled toward the back of the Humvee before scooting underneath the bed, dragging the rifle with him in the mud. He positioned himself between the driver’s side tires, held the rifle tight at his chest, and rolled out into the fray.

On his stomach and perpendicular to the Humvee, he propped himself onto his elbows and searched for a source of incoming fire. Straight ahead of him he caught a muzzle flash ten feet off the ground. It was coming from atop a building or shed. Roof leveled the rifle, angling it upward, and fired. A single pulse of the .308 projectiles ended the threat.

A collection of flashes lit what Roof could now tell was a group of buildings on the other side of the farm-to-market road. He guessed there were five more targets, but he couldn’t place their exact locations. The light from one obscured the burst from another. He couldn’t afford to waste what was left of the twenty rounds he had left in the rifle. A volley of shots missed him a few feet to his left.

Roof glanced over his left shoulder. Skinner and Dalton were holding their positions in the Humvee’s bed, both of them using its sidewall as the front edge of a bunker. They’d dropped from their exposed standing position and had taken cover.

From the corner of his eye, he spotted the location of a single flash. It was roughly ground level. Roof couldn’t tell if the target was fully or partially exposed.