The Day After Never (Book 1): Blood Honor

by Russell Blake

  “No,” Lucas said. “What do I owe you?”

  “For the antibiotics, fifty rounds of 5.56mm was what Duke and I agreed to. For the visit? Maybe a jar of your granddad’s devil juice?”

  Lucas nodded. “Deal. In any hurry?”

  “Nah. I know you’re good for it.”

  “I’ve got the rounds. I’ll bring the white lightning next trip.”

  Lucas and the doctor counted out the rounds from Lucas’s saddlebag, and they shook hands at the conclusion.

  “Where you headed now?” the doctor asked.

  “To the ranch. I need some rest.”

  The doctor studied Lucas’s face, now with four days of growth, and nodded. “You could use it.”

  “I’m afraid to look in a mirror.”

  Lucas followed him to the patient exam bedroom and regarded the woman a final time. When he was done, the doctor walked with him onto the porch. Lucas hesitated and looked down the street before speaking in a hushed voice. “You’re an educated man. What do you make of her tattoo?”

  “The eye? Oh, that sort of thing was popular in the old days. It’s the Eye of Providence – the all-seeing eye of God. It’s been used by many groups. The Masons, for instance. Or the Mormon temple in Salt Lake.”

  Something about the doctor’s tone gave Lucas pause. “What else?”

  “Well, it’s really just folklore. But it was also the symbol of the Illuminati. In that context, it was the eye of Satan. On the old paper dollar, the symbol over the pyramid was a classic example of the eye of the devil watching over the masses.”

  Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You believe that?”

  “Like with most icons, the original meanings get lost with time. The eye was originally Egyptian, I believe: the Eye of Horus. Reality is that there are few common symbols that haven’t been appropriated by various groups, whether good…or bad.”

  Lucas’s face could have been carved from granite as he rode out of town, the empty travois trailing behind him, every step of the four-and-a-half-mile trek from town to his grandfather’s ranch labored. He wasn’t sure what to make of the doctor’s explanation of the tattoo, but as the morning sun beat down on him, Tango snorting occasionally with fatigue, Lucas’s mind was anything but at peace.

  Chapter 10

  Lucas guided Tango down the final yards of the uneven dirt road that led to the ranch, and stopped at a ten-foot-high iron gate, which was padlocked shut. A sign beside it advised visitors that if they could read it, they were at risk of being shot. A delighted bark sounded from inside the dirt walls that encircled the ranch, made higher by the six-foot-deep sheer trench he’d dug outside the wall to make scaling it harder.

  A chocolate Labrador bounded toward him and barked again, and Lucas lowered himself from the saddle and approached the lock.

  “Hey, Bear,” he said, and reached through the gate to give the big dog a scratch behind his ears as his tail furiously fanned the air. Lucas leaned forward and pulled a lanyard from inside his shirt and slid the key into the industrial lock, noting that it was still adequately lubricated and opened with a sharp snick. He unbolted the gate and led Tango through, Bear barking nonstop to announce the arrival of his owner. Massively muscled for his breed and with a head the size of his namesake, Bear’s fierce appearance belied his gentle nature, and in reality he was a butterball.

  Lucas locked the gate behind him and loosened Tango’s girth. His grandfather stepped from the shade, dressed in his ubiquitous jeans and jean shirt, a ten-gallon Stetson making his head seem small in comparison. Once over six feet, he’d shrunk since Lucas had moved in, and although still vital enough to work sunup to sundown around the ranch, he was clearly in the twilight of his years. The old man’s ramrod posture was a sharp contrast to the doctor’s stoop; even though his grandfather was fifteen years older than the physician, he had the demeanor of a much younger man.

  “That was quick,” his grandfather said.

  “Morning, Hal,” Lucas replied. The old man insisted Lucas address him by his first name. “Ran into some trouble, so going to sleep it off before I head back out.”

  “Trouble? You hurt?” Hal asked.

  “No. I’m fine.” Lucas gave him a quick rundown of his adventure as he unsaddled Tango and led him into the barn. When the horse was in the cool interior of his stall, drinking from a water trough supplied by the ranch’s well, Lucas removed his weapons and set them aside for cleaning.

  “Been quiet here,” Hal said when Lucas had finished his account.

  “Beats the alternative.”

  “Glad to see you made it in one piece, boy.”

  Lucas swallowed hard. That was as close to affection as the old man got. “Me too.”

  Even though they were awkward in each other’s presence, Hal was the closest living person Lucas had, and the old man had raised him like a father when his own had met an untimely end. Also a Texas Ranger, Lucas’s dad had been bigger than life, a rawboned man who laughed loudly and whose spirit filled a room. When he’d been gunned down in the line of duty when Lucas was nine, Hal had stepped into the gap and acted as surrogate. Only as he got older did Lucas realize that his mother’s extended absences from Hal’s original West Texas ranch had less to do with job opportunities in the city and more to do with numbing her chronic disappointment in life with alcohol and drugs. Lacking any other model, Lucas had followed Hal’s lead, and he saw much of himself in the older man as he approached middle age himself.

  “Place looks pretty tidy,” Lucas observed. “Ruby been by?”

  Hal snorted. “None of your business, that. And in any case, she’s hardly the domestic type. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”

  Lucas looked as though he was about to pose another question, but Hal deflected him. “How much ammo you burn?” his grandfather asked, adjusting his belt.

  “Net even. Duke reimbursed me.”

  “Good.”

  Growing up on a rural Texas ranch, Lucas had learned respect for nature as well as weapons from Hal, who’d been a Marine for two tours before working on an oil wildcatting crew. Over the years Hal had saved enough to buy a ranch north of El Paso, and he’d used the wide-open spaces to teach young Lucas how to ride and shoot in the best tradition of a lost Western way of life. Hal’s only complaint, voiced every birthday, was that he’d been born a century too late and had missed out on all the fun – the birth of the state, the frontier, cattle drives, gunfights at the OK Corral. Partially a joke, there was some truth to the regret, and when Hal had been offered a sizeable chunk of money for his spread by a speculator, he’d jumped at it, bought the more manageable current ranch outside of Loving, and never looked back.

  “Getting too crowded around here, anyway,” Hal had announced when he’d phoned Lucas to break the news of his move from Texas to New Mexico. “Can’t hear yourself think with all the development. Not like it used to be.”

  “Nothing is,” Lucas had agreed, busy with his own life in El Paso. “Need help moving?”

  “Nah. I’ll sort it out.”

  That had been thirteen years ago, and Hal had adapted to his new surroundings like he’d been there all his life. He’d bought fifty head of reasonable cattle and built himself a three-bedroom ranch house with a barn big enough to store a dirigible, and had gone to work like he still had miles of runway left.

  Lucas snapped back to the present and realized he’d missed the last thing Hal had said. “What?”

  “Bear’s been mooning around like a lost puppy since you left. I swear that fleabag’s got a few screws loose.”

  Bear, hearing his name, leapt from where he was lying in the corner beside some hay bales and came running over like a charging bull. The big dog nearly knocked him over as he pushed through Lucas’s legs like when he had as a puppy, apparently unaware that he was now over ninety pounds of canine muscle.

  “He’s a good boy. Aren’t you?” Lucas said, patting Bear’s flank and giving him another ear rub. When he straighte
ned, he yawned and collected his guns and the crossbow he kept in his saddlebag. “I’m going to clean and stow these and then hit the sack. I feel like someone beat me with a board.”

  “Getting soft from all this easy living. That’s your problem.”

  Lucas managed a wry grin. “Guess so.”

  “I’ll be out here doing all the work, then,” Hal said.

  “Same as ever. I’m gonna take a bubble bath and do my nails.”

  Lucas carted his weapons into the house and set them on the round dining room table before hanging his hat on one of three hooks by the door, beside which stood an upright gun safe that contained a small arsenal, Lucas’s weapons on the right, Hal’s on the left. Lucas opened it, inventoried the two Browning shotguns, a sack with a half dozen grenades he’d bartered from Duke, and a half dozen handguns, all .45s, and then removed a universal cleaning kit and carried it to the table, leaving the safe door open. Hal favored lever-action Winchesters, a pump-action riot shotgun with a pistol grip, and a converted AR-15, the latter a concession to Lucas, who’d pointed out that having common ammunition for their automatic assault rifles would be important for efficiency’s sake in any kind of ranch-defense scenario.

  Like Lucas, the only handgun Hal had any use for was the 1911 model .45, and he had two, one of which was on his hip at all times.

  Lucas hummed as he broke down the M4A1 with practiced hands and cleaned it thoroughly, his eyes occasionally wandering to the safe. Neatly stacked military ammunition cans occupied the center, mostly 5.56mm jacketed rounds. Cartons of twelve-gauge double-aught shotgun shells completed the cache, along with a box of .22 long rifle for the hunting rifle Hal kept in his bedroom for rabbits and smaller critters.

  Lucas looked over at the framed photographs that lined the bookcase’s middle shelf and stopped at the photo of his father in his Ranger uniform, so alive he seemed like he could jump from the frame at any moment. Lucas had inherited his chiseled facial features and gray eyes, and both were over six feet, but there the resemblance ended, far as Lucas could see. Whereas his father had been a bull, Lucas was leaner, though still muscular. That he was now two years older than his father had been when he’d died occurred to him every time he looked at the picture, and he quickly turned away.

  Finished with his task, he slipped the Remington 700 into the safe and carried his M4 into the bedroom. He stripped and gave himself a gravity-fed shower, the water cold and refreshing, and then pulled on clean underwear and crawled into bed. Bear was already snoring softly on the floor beside him, and after placing the Kimber on the night table next to the bed, his M4 leaned against the wall beside it, Lucas was asleep less than a minute after his head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 11

  Hal’s voice cut through the silence of the bedroom like a bullhorn. “Lucas! Wake up, boy!”

  Lucas bolted upright, already reaching for his Kimber before his eyes were completely open.

  “Easy. No need for iron,” Hal said from the doorway.

  Lucas looked around the room and, after ascertaining no threat, lowered his weapon. Hazy sunlight filtered through the open window, the breeze cooling the house during the heat of the day.

  “What’s wrong, Grand…Hal?” Lucas corrected, rubbing his eyes.

  “Visitor.”

  “What? Who?”

  “That Deputy Alan fellow. Get some clothes on and come out. He’s in the living room.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  Lucas coughed and threw off the sheet as Hal turned and trundled back into the living room, pulling the door closed behind him. Lucas emerged two minutes later and eyed Carl’s deputy, a towheaded young man with thick features and sky blue eyes and a faded yellow Caterpillar baseball cap pulled low over his brow.

  “Afternoon, Lucas. Sorry to bother you,” Alan said.

  Lucas nodded wordlessly, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

  Alan soldiered on, staring at his shoes. “Sheriff wants to see you in town.”

  “Yeah? Why?” Lucas growled.

  “That woman you brought this morning? She came to. Fever broke.”

  Lucas’s expression didn’t change. “And?”

  “Sheriff said to get you. That’s all I know, Lucas. I swear.”

  “Been too long since I got more than a few hours’ sleep, Alan.”

  “More than a few. Been sleeping for six,” Hal corrected.

  “Feels like two,” Lucas said, and then sighed. “Don’t want to ride after dark, Alan. Takes an hour each way. Won’t have much time to talk.”

  “I appreciate it,” Alan said, looking relieved that Lucas had agreed.

  Lucas gathered his things and donned his hat. Bear accompanied him to the barn, where he saddled up a liver chestnut yearling with a white blaze that Lucas rode sometimes – Tango had pulled more than his weight and needed the rest. Alan was waiting for him by the front gate beside his mount, a buckskin mare. Bear gave the men a farewell bark as they rode onto the dirt road, and Hal closed and locked the gate behind them.

  Neither man spoke on the way into Loving. Alan was a decent enough man; he’d been only a teenager when he’d lost his parents to the flu, and after recovering, he’d put his back into helping create a viable environment, working long hours on guard duty and building the barricade wall. He’d eventually married a survivor girl who’d given birth to a little boy last year, which made Alan part of the hope they all had for the future, to varying degrees. The deputy role was an honorary one, which was why Lucas didn’t bust Alan’s chops for waking him – all the man could expect for his service was appreciation and an occasional gift.

  A blood-red sun hung low in the western sky, and Lucas’s and Alan’s shadows were long as they rode into town. Curious residents watched them trot by, and Alan guided them to the police station by the main square. Sheriff Carl stood outside, hands on his hips, watching as they tied their mounts to a streetlamp that did duty as a hitching post.

  “You wanted to talk?” Lucas said without preamble as he neared.

  “Appreciate you coming in. Water?”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  “Let’s take a walk over to the doc’s. We can talk on the way.”

  “Riding’s faster.”

  “We’re not that far.”

  Lucas decided not to fight any pointless battles and acquiesced. “Watch the shop?” Carl said to Alan, who nodded and sat on a plastic chair outside the main door. Lucas adjusted his M4 strap and looked to the sheriff with a raised eyebrow.

  Carl set the pace as they negotiated the dusty street. “You mentioned that the men who attacked the woman’s party were scavengers?” he began.

  “Raiders. They had Mohawks,” Lucas corrected.

  “Right. Kind of off their turf, weren’t they?”

  “Probably slim pickings in their area. They must be running out of people to rob.”

  “That’s what it looked like to you?”

  Lucas threw him a look. “What else would it be?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “Neither was I. I just brought the girl to the doc.”

  “Lot of chatter on the radio today about the attack on Duke’s,” Carl said, changing the subject.

  “It was bad,” Lucas said, his words clipped.

  “They Raiders too?”

  “Didn’t get a close look at many of them, but the ones that I saw didn’t have Mohawks.”

  “So you don’t think they’re related?”

  Lucas frowned. “Why would they be?”

  They turned onto the doctor’s street. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to put things together, Lucas. Figure out whether we’re looking at the start of something that could endanger us.”

  Lucas shrugged. “You need to get out more. There’s a lot of ugly on the other side of the wall.”

  “You said it looked like they tortured Clem?”

  Lucas nodded. “He was messed u
p.”

  “Why?”

  They were interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming from inside the doctor’s house. Lucas and the sheriff exchanged a glance and then ran for the front door. The doctor appeared at the threshold, his expression troubled, but brightened when he saw the pair of them.

  “What is it, Doc?” Carl asked, huffing slightly.

  “She’s awake, but she’s not making a lot of sense,” the doctor said.

  Another cry sounded from inside, and the doctor stepped aside. “Might as well see if you can calm her down. I couldn’t.”

  Lucas drew a deep breath and followed the sheriff into the gloomy interior. A cat shot across the floor like black lightning and scurried out the window at the sight of their boots, the space suddenly too crowded for its liking. The house was furnished simply, the only exception an upright piano occupying a place of honor in the living room. Carl approached the examination room, beckoned to Lucas, and then entered.

  When Lucas followed the sheriff in, the woman was sitting up, the back of the exam table raised to support her, and her eyes were wide, as though terrified. She looked from Carl to Lucas and then back to Carl, stopping at the badge pinned to his shirt.

  Carl shifted from foot to foot. “Ma’am, my name’s Carl Green; I’m the sheriff. You’re safe, but you’ve been hurt. Wounded, so please take it easy. You were shot in the leg and shoulder.” He paused, giving his words time to register. The woman looked at him uncomprehendingly. After a moment he continued, gesturing at Lucas. “This man rescued you. He brought you here. His name’s Lucas Shaw.”