Harbor

by Tom Abrahams

  HARBOR

  The Traveler Series Book 8

  Tom Abrahams

  A PITON PRESS BOOK

  HARBOR

  A Traveler Series Story

  © Tom Abrahams 2019. All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Hristo Kovatliev

  Edited by Felicia A. Sullivan

  Proofread by Pauline Nolet

  Formatted by Stef McDaid at WriteIntoPrint.com

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  http://tomabrahamsbooks.com

  Click here to join the free PREFERRED READER’S CLUB

  WORKS BY TOM ABRAHAMS

  THE TRAVELER POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN SERIES

  HOME

  CANYON

  WALL

  RISING

  BATTLE

  LEGACY

  HERO

  HARBOR

  A DARK WORLD: THE COMPLETE SPACEMAN CHRONICLES

  SPACEMAN

  DESCENT

  RETROGRADE

  THE ALT APOCALYPSE SERIES

  ASH

  LIT

  TORRENT

  AFFLICTION

  PILGRIMAGE: A POST-APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE

  EXTINCTION RED LINE (WITH NICHOLAS SANSBURY SMITH)

  POLITICAL CONSPIRACIES

  SEDITION

  INTENTION

  JACKSON QUICK ADVENTURES

  ALLEGIANCE

  ALLEGIANCE BURNED

  HIDDEN ALLEGIANCE

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  Acknowledgements

  For Courtney, Luke, and Sam

  Without whom I am nothing.

  And for the fans

  Without whom Marcus Battle is nothing.

  “Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.”

  —Jules Verne

  CHAPTER 1

  APRIL 20, 2054, 3:15 PM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  Population Guard Captain Greg Rickshaw cracked the knuckles on his fingers, popping them one at a time. He did this as much to relieve the pressure and stiffness in his joints as he did to intimidate the man in front of him.

  Each pop echoed in the concrete cell. Each one made the other man blink like a frightened puppy. Sweat beaded above his upper lip.

  Rickshaw watched him intently. His expression was flat, devoid of any emotion. He breathed slowly through his abnormally large nostrils and they flared.

  Those nostrils and his large knotty hands were the dominant physical features that defined Rickshaw. He used both for effect, and his reputation preceded him.

  He was powerfully built and looked much younger than his sixty-five years. He’d survived better than most post-Scourge, and much as he manipulated the joints in his fingers, he’d done so with the power structures that collapsed and reformed in the ensuing years. Rickshaw was good at forming alliances with the right people before he flipped on them, selling them out for the next best thing and promises of more power.

  As the captain of the government’s Population Guard, he was admired for his tenacity and quick decision making, and feared for his ruthless application of the law.

  Across from him, chained to the stainless-steel table separating the two, his quarry was on the verge of whimpering when Rickshaw finally spoke. The captain had been in the cell for a good ten minutes without saying a word or making a sound other than his breathing and the crack of his knuckles.

  “Before the Scourge,” Rickshaw said, “when you weren’t even a dirty thought in your daddy’s head, I knew this dog breeder. You know what a dog breeder is?”

  The man blinked twice, perhaps considering if this was a trick question. He shook his head.

  Rickshaw folded his hands on the table, his fingers laced together. “It’s someone who makes a living by forcing dogs to get pregnant. Then, when the dogs are ready, they sell them.”

  Although the air in the cell was cool and dry, it was fetid with the nutty odor of dried urine. Rickshaw flared his nostrils again and crinkled his nose against the smell. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Where are you from?”

  “Call me…Booth,” he said. “Warner Robins.”

  Rickshaw raised an eyebrow. “Warner Robins?” he asked. “Nice place. I was there before the Scourge. Did some contract work at the base. Rented a place off Huber Road.”

  Booth didn’t respond. He shifted in his seat, and the cuffs strained against his wrists, the chains screeching against the stainless tabletop.

  Rickshaw smiled. He unlaced his fingers and placed his palms flat on the table. “That’s neither here nor there. Right, Booth? I was talking about dog breeding.”

  Booth’s shoulders slumped and he leaned forward. His eyes darted around the cell, checking the two armed guards positioned on both sides of the solid metal door. They were statues, unmoving and seemingly disinterested in the conversation.

  “It always struck me as an odd thing,” said Rickshaw. “Dogs would have litters of puppies, one after the other. The little mommas would give birth, lick the babies to get ’em breathing and moving, then nurse them for weeks. Then somebody comes and takes the babies. One at a time they get bought, adopted, whatever.”

  Rickshaw lifted one of his hands and waved it like he was shooing away a fly. He watched Booth’s confused reaction, the uncertainty as to where this was leading.

  “We were populating the world with all these designer puppies,” said Rickshaw. “Way too many of them, given that there were plenty of dog pounds full of homeless dogs.”

  The light in the room was bright and sterile. The overhead LED lights were designed to mimic a hospital room, pre-Scourge fluorescents that washed the color from their reach.

  Booth was pale, his skin sallow. It might have been from the lights. It might have been the fear racking his body, which now shuddered. His teeth chattered.

  Rickshaw was using both hands as he spoke. Wide, sweeping gestures accentuated his message. “But it was fine for people to take these dogs the world didn’t really need and put them to good use. Train them. Make them whatever each buyer wanted them to be. That was acceptable.”

  Outside the room, a door clanged shut, and someone shouted, pleaded for help. There was banging, heels of fists pounding on metal. Booth’s eyes flitted past Rickshaw. His nose twitched.

  “I even knew this breeder once who would do these temperament tests on the puppies before selling them,” said Rickshaw. “They’d put the puppy in a stressful situation and test it. How would it react to an open umbrella or a loud noise? What would it do if you pinned it on its back or held it in the air with its legs dangling? Can you believe that, Boot
h?”

  Booth’s attention was on the banging beyond his cell. His eyes were fixed on the door pinned between the two armed guards.

  Rickshaw reached out toward Booth’s face, at his distant gaze, and snapped his fingers. “Booth? You hear me? I was talking about temperament.”

  Booth blinked back into focus. He nodded loosely, his jaw slack.

  Rickshaw put a hand on his own chest, tapping his shirt. He wore a high-collared tunic underneath a black leather duster that draped along either side of his chair. The color of the long coat matched the black leather Spanish bolero on his head.

  “This is next level to me,” said Rickshaw. “Temperament testing? Not only are we taking a newborn baby from a mother, but we’re testing it to make sure it’s the right fit for the strangers to whom we’re selling it. Don’t you think that’s next level?”

  The muscles in Booth’s jaw flexed, as if he was trying to still the chatter of his teeth. He shrugged and held his shoulders up toward his ears for an exaggerated minute before he lowered them.

  Rickshaw smiled again. His dimples deepened on his thin cheeks. “I’ll take that as a yes. Next level. The systematic buying and selling of babies. The careful placement of them in an environment where they’re most likely to thrive. It was a system that worked. The economics of it worked. It worked, that is, until it didn’t. Until the Scourge and the drought meant dogs didn’t have much of a place anymore other than on spits and in pots.”

  Booth’s eyes were glassy now, his chin trembling, and he was shivering. Rickshaw caught a whiff of something distinctly reminiscent of excrement.

  “Do you understand my point here, Booth?” he asked rhetorically. “My point is that what we do as the Pop Guard is a necessary function. And it’s no different from what was once a perfectly acceptable system of birth, sale, and employment.”

  Booth’s face flushed pink, even in the harsh overhead light, and tears silently rolled down both cheeks. They dripped from his chin and hit the table.

  “Am I comparing humans to dogs?” asked Rickshaw. “Yes and no. Take it however you want. I’m merely explaining to you how there is precedent within Western society.”

  Rickshaw knew how crazy he sounded. That was the point. He didn’t actually believe humans were like dogs. He liked dogs more. He wished he still had the mutt he’d found on a roadside as a kid.

  His point was to send Booth’s mind reeling, to put him off-balance, to make the poor rube believe that he didn’t value human life. That would be useful in the coming minutes as he worked to extract information from Booth.

  If he wanted to be a martyr like the nom de guerre he’d employed, let him. But Rickshaw doubted he’d stay silent. Whatever Booth knew, he would reveal it. However little he kept secret, he’d release into the ether. It had worked before; it would work now.

  Rickshaw folded his hands and placed them on the table in front of him. He rested his forearms there and twisted his neck from side to side. A series of short cracks rippled through the solid room. “I say all of that to say this,” Rickshaw droned. “Have you ever seen a beaten dog, one that didn’t end up in the right situation?”

  Booth furrowed his brow. That pressed the tears down his face faster. He shook his head.

  Rickshaw grinned broadly and slapped the table with both hands. Booth jumped in his seat. Another putrid waft filtered into Rickshaw’s nose, but he swallowed past it. “Of course not. Given your age, you might never have even seen a dog at all. Doesn’t matter though. The point remains the same. You catch my drift.”

  The banging in the hall stopped. It was quiet now except for the slide of Booth’s chains across the hard surface of the stainless table.

  “A beaten dog eventually bites,” said Rickshaw. “It tries to get even. But not before it relents. Not before it cowers and licks its wounds. Not before it quits the behavior that got it cornered and in trouble in the first place.”

  Rickshaw stood and used a boot to push back his chair. The feet scraped across the concrete floor. He dragged his fingers along the stainless steel and walked slowly around the edge of the table toward Booth. “I need answers. I need you to be a good boy. Do you understand?”

  Booth swallowed hard and shrank away from Rickshaw. The binds dug into his wrists, the chains drawing taut.

  Rickshaw flipped back the heavy leather edge of the duster and revealed a matching holster. He slid his hand onto the worn wooden grip of a revolver and flipped the holster’s latch.

  Booth’s eyes fixed on the hand, the gun. He squeaked a protest, a plea.

  Rickshaw withdrew the gun and spun it in his hand. Back and forth it spun on his trigger finger. The smile evaporated from Rickshaw’s face. His dimples disappeared. His gray eyes darkened and his expression hardened.

  “You gonna be a good boy?” he asked and pressed the revolver’s muzzle against the meat at the back of Booth’s right hand.

  CHAPTER 2

  APRIL 20, 2054, 3:30 PM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  GUN BARREL CITY, TEXAS

  It was best Marcus keep his distance. He leaned against a VW bug. It was the old original VW with a simple air cooled engine. Like a lawnmower, easy to fix and easy on fuel post Scourge. He was standing with his ankles crossed and his arms folded across his chest. The woman next to him was slender, petite really, wearing denim overalls, a soiled gray T-shirt, and leather Converse high-top basketball shoes. There was no trace of the shoes’ original color. They were coated in the reddish brown dirt that seemed to find its way onto everything in Gun Barrel City.

  Several feet away and out of earshot, Lou and Dallas held each other. He had his hands on her belly, his lips pressed to her forehead. She leaned into him, her chin down and eyes closed. She had one hand on Dallas’s side and the other draped across David’s shoulder. The boy was clinging to their legs.

  It was difficult to watch and yet not watch. Such a private moment out in the middle of a cracked lake bed scattered with dead bodies and expectant mothers.

  The woman shifted uncomfortably and averted her gaze. She alternately ran her hands through her shoulder-length black hair and chewed on her cuticles. The skin around the beds of her nails was inflamed and swollen.

  The VW was hers. She called herself the conductor and wouldn’t give a name. When the Stoudemire family was finished with its emotional reunion, they would pile into the toy car and drive back to the funeral home.

  Not far from them, still at the water’s edge and wary of the strangers, was the gang of pregnant women and their children. They stayed put, awaiting instructions about what to do next.

  Neither the conductor nor Marcus wanted to listen to the Stoudemires as the initial relief dissolved into emotional second-guessing. Dallas was both angry and relieved. Lou was defensive and thankful. David appeared to be bewildered.

  “You left him,” Dallas said for the third time. “They could have killed him.”

  “But they didn’t,” said Lou. “He’s fine. That’s what matters.”

  “He’s not fine,” Dallas snapped. “He killed a man. With a knife. He can’t even ride a bike and he’s a killer.”

  Lou seethed now. Her face reddened and she tensed. The muscles in her neck were visible as she jabbed a finger at her husband. “Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you ever call him that. He defended himself. He did what I taught him to do. Am I a killer? Is that how you see me?”

  Marcus sympathized with Dallas. He understood his point. Lou had made a choice to save a bunch of strangers at the possible expense of her son. It was both selfish and selfless, a paradox of a choice.

  He also understood why Lou had done it. It was honorable. It was human. And in this world there were so many inhumane choices, decisions one had to make to stay alive, to maintain some semblance of sanity, that doing the unthinkable in the pre-Scourge world was unquestionably right.

  Most of all, though, Marcus was glad not to be the object of Lou’s ire. He’d been at the pointed edge of her
sharp tongue too many times to count. She was passionate and uncompromising. He watched her flip the switch on her husband, from being defensive to attacking in the blink of an eye. There was still something feral in her, and he wondered how much of it was her father’s doing and how much of it he should take credit for.

  Lou jabbed the air with her finger. It might as well have been poking a hole in Dallas’s chest. “We’re alive,” she said and nodded toward the water. “They’re alive. Their kids are alive. Our kid is alive.”

  Dallas raised his hands in surrender. The tension on his face, his narrowed eyes, did not relax. “Fine. I’m not doing this. Not here, not now. We have more important things to do than argue about what might have happened.”

  Smart man, thought Marcus. Live to fight another day.

  Dallas and Lou stepped closer to the VW. Both of them eyed Marcus, then the conductor.

  “What’s next?” asked Lou. “Where do we go?”

  “I’m going to take you back across the street,” she said. “When I picked up David and Dallas, they said you had some gear strapped to the horses.”

  “We do,” said Lou. “Then what? And what about all these women? Their kids? We can’t leave them here.”

  The conductor chewed on her nail for a moment. She was surveying the refugees. That’s what they were. “I’ll take care of them. I’ll make sure they find good places. But I can’t move them all at once. The largest group we can handle is six. Anything bigger than that gets too complicated, too tough to move.”

  Marcus uncrossed his legs and stood up straight. He aimed a thumb at the VW behind him. “You can fit six in this car? I doubt that. And our truck’s no good. No spare tire and there’s an issue with the front axle anyhow.”

  The conductor’s expression shifted. She chewed on something in her mouth, her lips pursed. It was if this hadn’t occurred to her until now. “I’m not the only conductor,” she said. “We’ve got others. They’ve got other forms of transport.”