Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One

by W. Michael Gear

  Brandon kept his grip on Shanteel’s hand as he said, “The others? Willy used the backhoe and piled all nine of them in a hole and covered them up.”

  “So, how long do you think you can stay up here?” Breeze asked.

  Amber spread her hands wide. “We’ve got everything we need. Just like the Dukurika, we can live here for the next six thousand years. Plants, animals, water, and shelter. That’s pretty much it considering the rest of the world is gone.”

  “They’re going to be back,” Sam said. “As long as Edgewater’s out there. You didn’t see him like I did that day at the tannery. He was bloodied at the ranch, and then again at slickside. That’s intolerable for a man like him.”

  He looked around the fire. “Governor Agar wants him gone. Four days from now, if everything works right, there’s going to be a move to take him down and return control of the Basin to local folks.”

  “Agar sending troops?” Brandon asked.

  Breeze shook her head. “I doubt it. The Guard’s pinned down on the border. He might dispatch Militia, but honestly, they’re not the sort to go toe-to-toe in a stand-up fight.”

  “Oh my God!” Danielle cried. “Are you people listening to yourselves? Hearing what you’re saying? Stand up fight? We’re just trying to stay alive. Get it?”

  “Danielle,” Shanteel said before anyone else spoke, “I’m tired of you and your shit. You and Ashley, both. Maybe it’s about time you start pulling your weight. Tappans are good people. Let you wash the dishes and do house chores, while they kept food in your mouths and got shot keeping you from being hauled off to be gang-ass-raped by them white savages.”

  “Hey!” Danielle snapped, eyes glittering. “We’re living a nightmare here! We didn’t sign on for any of this shit, you get it?”

  Shanteel thrust a hard finger her way. “We’re all living a nightmare, bitch. My family, hell, all of Philadelphia’s gone. And you think Manhattan’s survived? It be gone. No Fifth Avenue. No Madison Square Garden. No Grand Central.” She gestured around. “This is it. And you are alive where millions are not. Now, get your white-assed Karen shit together and deal with it!”

  Danielle’s expression broke. Glancing at Ashley—who stared slack-faced at her hands hanging in her lap—Danielle stumbled to her feet and vanished into the dark in the direction of the tents.

  “Sorry,” Shanteel murmured. “Guess I lost it.”

  “No,” Amber answered wearily. “I should have taken care of that days ago.”

  “Been too worried about other things?” Sam asked kindly. “Like the fact that American is now Syria?”

  “I am such a coward,” Amber whispered, a curiously fragile smile on her face. “Should have been me they shot.”

  “No coward steps forward with a rifle while surrounded by a half dozen armed men, my dear,” Meggan told her and reached over to pat her on the shoulder. “First you, and then Shyla. You bought us the time.”

  “And Pam, standing where I should have been, paid the price,” Amber added.

  Breeze’s hard-eyed glance shifted from face to face. “Look, I don’t know you people. But I’ve been out there where the shit’s coming down. Shanteel’s right. It’s gone. All of it. Ask yourselves, who comes out on top? People like Agar and Old Bill, or guys like Edgewater?”

  Sam thought he felt Shyla’s hand on his shoulder as he said, “We do.”

  He glanced around, wondering if he were insane. “Look around at who we are: Shanteel, black Philadelphia. Me, Long Island Latino. Brandon, back-woods Wyoming. Amber, freed captive. Willy, Native Shoshoni. Danielle, and, no, I don’t count her out yet—Manhattan Jew. Breeze,” and he chuckled “whiskey-drinking rodeo queen.”

  She grinned and flipped him the finger.

  He slapped hands to the Marlin in his lap. “And we can’t forget Court the computer geek. He’s in Cheyenne, planning how to build us a sustainable future.”

  “Or Jon,” Amber added, “misguided musician graduate student and tonight’s lookout guy up on the ridge.”

  “What about me?” Ashley asked softly.

  Shanteel said, “So far? You’re shit.”

  Breeze, not unkindly, said, “Ashley, one way or another, you’d better figure it out.”

  “Meanwhile,” Brandon said, “What are we going to do about Edgewater? Sis tells me that if Mom lives, she’s going to be tried and executed. My granddad and dad may be under arrest even while we sit here. And Sam’s right, they’ll be coming for us eventually.”

  “Can we hit them first?” Sam asked, glancing around the fire. What the hell, without Shyla, what did he have to live for?

  Brandon glanced at Willy, who nodded and said, “Might be a way. If you don’t mind taking a chance on getting killed.”

  “How’s that?” Sam asked.

  Brandon had narrowed his eyes as he stared into the fire. “Clark Ranch, where Edgewater’s holed up over the on the South Fork? It’s got a back door. My guess is that they won’t be expecting anyone to be opening it.”

  Word Count

  There are just shy of 200,000 words in the English language. But there is no word for being thrown from one insane mess of a situation to another. There should be. Like, from the Greeks who were really into tragedy.

  So, I’m home. Forgiven.

  Mom’s shot and in the hospital. Dad might be arrested. I’ve killed men, including a dear friend. I’m in elk camp with Brandon and a bunch of Eastern city college kids who don’t have a clue.

  Well, but for Amber Sagan. She’s haunted half-crazy by her own bad shit. Spooky woman. Reminds me of cracked glass.

  On the Line I was helping our people keep it together. Giving the state a chance.

  Protecting.

  Now I’m going off to kill people in order to give my family a chance. Still a warrior.

  Protecting.

  When does this shit end?

  Turns out the answer is never.

  — Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Breakfast the next morning turned out to be a chilly affair with the temperature in the high thirties. The camp woke up in a hazy gray world of fog and falling mist.

  Sam crawled out of his tent, wandered down into the trees to pee. One of the chickarees, the little red squirrels, was chattering down in the branches.

  Shyla, Shyla, God, he missed her. Felt like someone had twisted his soul out of his body with a bent stick. One instant he wanted to rage, to kill and murder, and the next to weep.

  He made his way up to the cook tent.

  Breeze had slept in the equipment tent, her sleeping bag wrapped in a survival blanket from her Guard boogie bag.

  Sam met her as she stepped out into the morning. Asked, “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like shit. One fucking horrible nightmare, after another. Each more disturbing than the last. Couple of flashbacks that had me scrambling for the M4. Good news is I caught myself before I shot up the camp. You?”

  “’Bout the same.” Sam yawned and blinked.

  While Breeze folded up her bag, Sam went about helping Meggan with the cooking as the crew drifted in for breakfast. What was the point of living so much of his life in a restaurant if he couldn’t help make a breakfast?

  “God, I hope Bill’s all right,” Meggan confided, her face lined. “I just lay there all night worrying about him.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” Sam stirred the potatoes sizzling in the big frying pan atop the Coleman stove. “He’s got his fight, we’ve got ours. Different battlefields, same war.”

  Meggan’s green eyes took on a pained look. “Hope to God we make it out of this. I owe that man my life.”

  Breeze heard as she stepped in for coffee. “After Grandma left, Grandpa was headed to ‘Hell in a hand basket’ as he used to say. You saved him, too. Gave him a direction.”

  Sam bit his lip, miserable enough to begrudge the Tappans their family. Suddenly he couldn’t take it. The urge to scream built in his chest. Fit
to burst him wide open.

  He dropped the spatula, picked up the .44 Marlin, and stalked out into the morning. Anywhere. Just to get away.

  Maybe it was Shyla, her hand like a mirage in his. But his wandering feet took him to the outcrop. The one where he’d sat with her that first night. Where they’d touched, shared their souls.

  He could hear the crew. They all ate in the big tent, people shivering and taking turns crowding around the small heat stove.

  They were his people now. Turned to outlaws in the eyes of some. Freedom fighters by the values of others.

  “How the hell did we end up here?” he asked Shyla, as if she were there, beside him. That all he had to do was hold his gaze just so, and she’d be there. That her death had all been a delusion. A nightmare gone wrong.

  Doesn’t matter how, Sam. It just is.

  Was that her? Had Shyla said that? Or had it been his tortured imagination?

  He thought if he really concentrated, he could see her. If he saw her, she’d be real. Not dead. Not buried. Not stolen from his life.

  He blinked to clear his sight. Squinted. Willed himself to see her. “Shyla,” he ordered. “Shyla. You’re coming to me.”

  Staring as hard as he could, he thought he saw shapes wavering in the gray mist. Waving, weaving slightly, like she was walking toward him. And yes! She moved! He could see her forming from...

  “Sam? You out here?”

  He jumped. Almost cried out. And the wavering form emerged from the mist: Breeze Tappan.

  “Go away.”

  Cutting across the slope, she settled herself on the rock beside him, saying, “Thanks for leaving me a space.”

  “I didn’t,” he told her. “I wanted to be with Shyla so I took her spot.”

  “Breakfast’s ready.”

  “Not hungry,” he told her bitterly.

  “Um, you got a reason for sitting out here in the cold and wet?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Yeah, I get it. I spent all night jerking awake. God, I hate the nightmares.” She paused. “You dream about slickside? Keep seeing it in your head?”

  “Yeah.” He suffered through the shivers, his hands clenched in his lap. “I killed him. Saw the bullet hit. That flap as the clothing jumps, and the guy’s body jerks under the impact. And all that screaming, and the horses, and it’s...it’s almost too much to...”

  “That’s the price you and I have to pay for saving those people down there eating breakfast.” She hunched against the cold.

  “They weren’t all Tubb’s men, were they?”

  “Nope. Some of them were just deputies. The guy in the lead, he was an old family friend. Just hired to guide. Another fucked-up thing I’ll have to answer for.”

  “All night long,” Sam whispered. “Shyla kept coming to me. And when she did, I just couldn’t stand it. If I could, I’d crawl down under the dirt in that grave just to be with her. Touch her. Feel her.”

  Breeze reached out, put her arm around him. “I’d bring her back for you if I could.”

  When he’d sniffed himself back into control and wiped the tears away, he added, “Then, last night, lying there alone, it all hit me. My home is gone. My family is gone, my neighborhood, all those people that I knew, grew up with. My friends back there. Zinny, Thomaso, Torpedo, and Shank. All the guys from the block.”

  “Some of them may have gotten out.”

  To end the long silence that ensued, she asked, “So, last night, you were the strong one. Now you’re up here drowning in grief. What happened?”

  “I pull that macho shit up because that’s what they need to hear. It’s just an act, Breeze. A fucking lie. I’m not the strong one. That’s Amber. Me? I’m just a scared dude from Long Island who’s lost it all.”

  “Damn, don’t I know.”

  He glanced skeptically at her. “Thought you were the Guard’s superhero.”

  “All those brave and daring deeds?” She grunted at the absurdity of the notion. “Either I was scared shitless, or I was just trying to get myself killed. First ‘cause of Felix. Then over all the people I shot down at the I-25 checkpoint.”

  Her voice went distant. “You get it? They were men, women, and children. Families. They were scared. Desperate. All they wanted was a chance. But they were coming in a flood. Someone started shooting at our guys. I didn’t think. Just stepped into the gap and picked up Bill’s M4.”

  She glanced down at her hand, frowned as if seeing for the first time. “I emptied three magazines into those people. Was reaching for a fourth when they finally broke and ran.” A pause. “I’m a monster. A mass murderer that people call a hero. And every time I tried to atone, I just got more famous.”

  “That night at the Hilton, the captain said you were trying to kill yourself.”

  “Sometimes there’s nothing left inside.” She snorted under her breath. “Slickside just added to the ledger. Now I’ve got Bradley Cole and those horses to add to tally. I figure I’m not getting out of this alive. But for the moment, I’ve got to keep it together.”

  “So, what changed?”

  “Mom getting shot. Edgewater. In the end, Sam, I’m damned. For now? Someone’s got to stand between the bad guys and my family.”

  “Yeah, Edgewater,” he said softly. “There’s still Edgewater.”

  He paused, the hollow inside expanding. “After yesterday, I guess I’m damned, too. I just wanted revenge. But watching those horses and men tumble down that slope?” He shook his head. “They didn’t all die immediately, did they?”

  “Nope. But that’s just the way it is.”

  “Shyla told me that. Just before you arrived.” Sam closed his eyes, shivering in the wet cold.

  She asked matter-of-factly: “You’re sure Edgewater is at Clark Ranch?”

  “That’s what Tank and Lehman said. You been there?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll say this for Edgewater, when he declares himself God, he goes whole hog. Nothing else like it in this part of the state. Old man Clark was a multi-billionaire. The house is like ten thousand square feet, huge garage, and that fancy horse barn with its varnished wooden stalls. Even got a building with a classic car collection. Tennis courts. There was talk for a while he was going to put in a nine-hole golf course.”

  “So, where’s the South Fork from here?”

  She tipped her head to the west. “Just over there. About thirty miles as the crow flies. About three days’ hard travel by trail on horseback. Willy, Amber, Brandon and Shanteel are in. So am I. What do you say we go kill the son of a bitch, or get killed trying?”

  “I guess I could do that.”

  “But here’s the deal: No suicide shit. No just walking into the guns to get it over with. See, the thing is, like down on the border, you’ve got to make it count. Gotta have that high in the blood, be totally jacked for the action.”

  “Like yesterday at slickside as they were riding out in that perfect line,” he said with an understanding nod.

  “Kind of a strange feeling, wasn’t it? The pounding of the blood, the excitement?”

  “Never felt anything like it before.”

  “Hey, if you’re going to die anyway, might as well go in a rush, right?” Breeze gave his shoulders one last squeeze and stood. “So, remember Shyla. Love her for all that she was, and all the hope that Edgewater took from you and her. Like me, you’ll pile up more ghosts, just make it pay at the end.”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s go get breakfast,” she told him.

  Changed

  When I started this journal, it wasn’t about me. I wrote this in an attempt to understand, to put everything that happened in perspective. The end of the world as you knew it doesn’t just happen every day.

  I should have died in Colorado, or on the Line.

  I’m home now, in the high country; I’m going to be leading a bunch of college kids on horseback over slippery trails across the backbone of the Absaroka Mountains. When we get to Clark Ranch, we’re goi
ng to attack it. This is how much reality has changed. Before the collapse, this would have been insane fantasy, the improbable stuff of fiction. Today it seems a matter of course.

  Somehow, I’ve become the leader, the “hero of the Line”.

  They all turn to me. Even Willy who was deep in the shit in Afghanistan.

  How did I get here?

  When it comes to understanding, I’m as much in the dark as when I started.

  — Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The clouds and drizzle lifted a little before ten, and by that time they had saddled and packed the horses they’d need. Meggan, Jon, and Ashley, each for their own reasons, had chosen to stay and keep the field camp occupied and supplied.

  “I’ll shoot a deer or elk,” Meggan told them. “With Jon and Ashley to help, we can cut wood, have everything ready with fresh horses when you come back.”

  If we come back.

  Sam found a macabre amusement in that thought. Hell, they were only heading across thirty miles of mountainous wilderness to try and kill a bipedal piece of shit protected by his own army.

  The day’s ride, however, left him speechless. If it wasn’t heart-stopping vistas of angular basalt peaks, dramatic valleys that dropped away into stunning depths, remnants of glaciers nestled in their high cirques, it was the incredible thrill of riding on horseback along some of the most perilous trails in the Rockies.

  While Willy, Brandon, and Breeze stayed on horseback, in the dangerous sections they ordered the greenhorns—as Sam and the rest of them readily admitted themselves to be—to lead their horses across the rougher sections on foot.

  The route consisted of a series of game trails that led west along the base of the high peaks and skirted the head of alpine valleys. But for the occasional saw-cut trees that betrayed a previous human hand, Sam could well have believed that he was the first human to pass this way.