“I’m truly sorry, my friend. You deserved better,” he whispered, and then offered an all-too-familiar prayer for the dead, ending with a soft “Amen.”
Lucas retraced his steps back outside, noting that the doctor’s house was one of the few that hadn’t been burned, and then realized that it had more to do with the materials it had been built with than with anything significant in the cartel’s approach. His was one of the oldest homes in town, constructed from cinder block in the 1930s, before sheetrock and studs had come into fashion after WWII. The house had been designed to withstand anything nature threw at it, and it had, although now there would be nobody to appreciate it.
Twenty minutes later Lucas returned to where Tango and Eve were waiting, his expression guarded under the brim of his hat.
“Where’s Aunt Sierra?” Eve asked.
“Not here.”
Eve edged closer. “I heard something over there,” she said, pointing into the brush.
Lucas pushed her aside, placing himself between her and any threat, and raised the M4, the fire selector switch clicking to sustained fire with an audible click.
A female voice called from the dense vegetation growing along the top of the riverbank. “Don’t shoot.”
“Come out with your hands up,” Lucas growled. “No second chances.”
The bushes rustled and a woman with flowing gray hair, a faded T-shirt, and loose-fitting woven cloth pants stepped out. “Lucas! I didn’t see you clearly. These old eyes…”
“Ruby!”
“Isn’t it awful?” she whispered, glancing at Eve, who was peeking from around one of Lucas’s legs.
“That’s not the word for it.”
“I know. I heard the shooting all the way out at my place. When it stopped, I came to investigate.” She paused, words inadequate. “The devil walked the earth today.”
“No argument.”
“God rest their souls.” Ruby lived three miles from town, an eccentric nature woman who subsisted by trading the specialized herbs she grew. Hal had known her for years, and the pair got along well, his dry delivery and deadpan sense of humor perfectly matched by Ruby’s rapier wit and keen intellect.
Lucas nodded. “I heard their horses headed south.”
“Yes. They came last night, late, and spent all night…” Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat. “They rode away about two hours ago.”
“Nobody left to abuse.” Lucas stopped. “Wait. Did you see them?”
She nodded. “I was hiding over here. I thought it was over, so I came to check, and then there were more shots, so I hunkered down here.”
“Tell me what you saw, Ruby.”
“They were…animals. No. Worse than that. Animals don’t inflict cruelty for fun.” She paused. “Everyone’s…everyone’s gone, aren’t they?”
Lucas’s expression told her everything she wanted to know, and more.
“I saw them ride off. Too many to count.”
“Did you go into town?”
Ruby shook her head. “No. I…I can guess. I heard the screams. Mothers begging for mercy for their children, kids crying…” Her voice was barely audible. “It was…it will stay with me forever, Lucas. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Did they take any prisoners?”
“No, they just…” Her brow furrowed, and then her eyes widened. “Wait. That’s not right. They did leave with a woman. I didn’t recognize her, though. I thought I knew all the townspeople, but…”
“What was she wearing?”
“Some kind of man’s coat, I think. Maybe some kind of shorts? Why? Is it important?”
Lucas’s breathing was ragged. Had he inflicted this abomination on the town by bringing Sierra to Loving? It didn’t make any sense. She had nothing to do with the cartel.
Assuming she’d told him the complete truth.
Ruby’s face changed as she looked over Lucas’s shoulder, past the town, toward the horizon. Lucas slowly turned and followed her gaze.
Another spire of smoke was rising into the sky in the near distance. From the east.
Ruby took a step closer and pointed a shaking finger. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “Is that…?”
Lucas’s expression darkened and his hand whitened on the M4 stock. “Looks like it’s coming from…”
Ruby’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no.”
Lucas nodded.
“The ranch.”
Chapter 23
Lucas pushed Tango as hard as he dared while Ruby followed behind him a fair distance on her mule, Jax, with Eve seated in front of her. Lucas had asked Ruby to mind the child, unsure what he would find when he arrived, but wanting to be prepared for anything – including full-scale war.
He gasped when he arrived at the gate, which, like that guarding the town, had also been blown apart, and jumped down from Tango, M4 at the ready. The barn was nothing more than a charred husk, its frame blackened and the planks burned away. Nine bodies littered the perimeter – cartel, by their appearance. The air was heavy with the odor of ash, and Lucas’s heart trip-hammered in his chest as he surveyed the grounds before heading into the house.
The heavy front door was ajar, and when he stepped inside, a low moan escaped from his lips. His grandfather was lying by the gun safe, his lever-action Winchester and one of the shotguns beside him, half the rounds gone from an ammo box by the window. He’d been shot a half dozen times, and had gone hard, by the look of him, dealing out more than the attackers had bargained for right to the end.
Lucas knelt beside him, tears streaming down his face, and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Hal. I should have been here. I…” His voice trailed off, ending in a strangled sob, and he sat back, shoulders sagging, grieving for the man who’d made him what he was, who’d taught him right from wrong, who had counseled him and reproached him and celebrated his successes like Lucas was his own son.
That these monsters had seen fit to attack an eighty-three-year-old man and destroy his life’s work, after he’d survived everything the planet could throw at him…
“They’ll pay,” Lucas promised, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’ll send them to hell. Every one of them.”
Lucas shuddered again at the sight of Hal’s body, and then he drew a long breath. That wasn’t his grandfather. That was just the shell he’d occupied, the container that had housed his spirit, nothing more. Hal was not that bit of carbon and water, that jumble of genes and synapses. That was merely the vehicle Hal had used, and now he was done with it, its purpose served.
Lucas slowly rose to his feet and moved to the photos scattered across the floor. He leaned over and lifted the one of his father in his Ranger garb and slid it inside his flak vest, the pain in his heart a ragged wound.
Why had they done this? They’d had to go out of their way and had paid a heavy toll to take the ranch. What possible purpose had it served?
Realization dawned on him. They hadn’t come for Hal or the ranch.
“They came for me,” he whispered. The words were an indictment. Everyone in town had believed that he’d refused to go look for the girl. That he’d gone back to the ranch and was sleeping off his adventure. He hadn’t even told the doctor he was going to meet Carl and Alan, only asked whether they’d left.
But why come for him? The question had only one answer: because he, and he alone, knew where he’d rescued Sierra. Even she didn’t. She’d been unconscious.
That stopped him. How had they known he’d been the one to bring her to Loving?
“Clem,” Lucas muttered. Of course. They’d tortured him not because they’d wanted to know about Duke’s defenses – because they’d wanted to know where he was going.
And when they’d learned that the woman wasn’t at Duke’s, they’d figured out that he’d taken her to the town the courier had been heading for, in search of the medicine she needed. The smaller search party had returned to Pecos for reinforcements – enough to raze the town and kill everyone in it.
<
br /> Lucas’s despair deepened. The odds that Duke had been attacked again, this time successfully, were high. Unless… There was a chance that they’d taken a stealth approach, having tried a frontal assault before and failed, and instead sent a confederate into the outpost to trade. A seemingly innocent question or two would have quickly confirmed that the woman wasn’t there, and the cartel would still have their outlet for weapon and supply trading.
That was how Lucas would have done it.
He nodded, his face impassive. It made sense.
Lucas looked over at the shortwave radio transmitter in the corner and shook his head – like the doc’s, smashed. Ruined rather than taken, even though it was worth its weight in gold.
A sound deep in the house froze him in his tracks.
A red streak led to his bedroom, and he swallowed the bile that threatened to flood his mouth. Lucas walked slowly toward the room, and when he heard the sound again, a spike of anguish shot straight through his heart.
Bear lay bleeding at the foot of his bed where he’d dragged himself, shot three times in his massive chest but too stubborn to die. He looked up at Lucas with chocolate eyes filled with pain, as though apologizing for failing to protect the ranch, for not doing better, for failing Lucas, and tried to lift his head.
Lucas’s eyes brimmed and he collapsed beside Bear with a strangled cry.
Ruby stood with Eve by the front gate, the little girl taking in the destruction, neither of them speaking. Ruby spotted the corpse of one of the attackers and turned Eve away, but she shrugged loose and continued staring at the house.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice small. “I’ve seen worse.”
A shot rang out from within the house, and Ruby gripped her shotgun tight to her chest. She was preparing to order Eve back to Jax when Lucas appeared at the front door, carrying Hal.
They moved slowly toward Lucas as he walked down the steps and made for the vegetable garden beside the well. When he reached it, he set his grandfather down and turned to Ruby.
“Got a shovel in my kit. I’ll bury him and Bear, here, on the land they loved, and then go into Loving and deal with the townsfolk.”
“I’ll help,” Ruby said quietly.
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.” She hesitated and then put her hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Lucas.”
He nodded curtly. “There’s work to be done.”
She watched as he marched to where Tango was drinking from the water trough and retrieved his camp shovel from his saddlebags, his expression hard, steel gray eyes unreadable. When he returned, he removed his plate carrier, strapped his M4 across his back, and began digging in the red dirt. Nothing could be heard other than the abrasive sound of the steel slicing into the earth.
“See if there’s any white lightning over in the root cellar,” he said. “Should be. Be obliged if you’d put as much as you can carry in your mule’s bags and top mine up. We’re going to need it.”
“Okay, Lucas.” She hesitated. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
He scooped out another shovelful of dirt and tossed it aside. “There’s a gun safe in the house. See if there’s anything useable left.”
She nodded. “I know where it is.”
“Could use as much .45 and 5.56mm as you can find.”
“Will do.”
“I can help,” Eve said.
Ruby patted her head. “Good. I could use some.”
Lucas watched them go, wondering at the little girl’s poise in the presence of so much death.
An hour later, Hal and Bear were buried. Lucas had wrestled a heavy stone to mark Hal’s grave, and they’d said a funeral prayer, commending his grandfather’s soul to God’s safekeeping. The cartel had raided the gun safe, and there was nothing to be scrounged, but they’d missed the door to the root cellar, where two dozen jars were filled with Hal’s potion, stored in the cool soil. Lucas went to his bedroom and packed what clothes he could fit in his saddlebags. Once Jax was loaded to the brim, they took a long final look at the ranch, and then Lucas sat Eve in front of him on Tango and they made their way back to town.
The afternoon was fading by the time he and Ruby had dragged all the corpses into the wood-frame town hall, where they’d hauled as much lumber and cloth as they could find. The cartel had apparently been uninterested in taking the time to destroy the empty building, preferring to concentrate on murder and desecrating the homes of the innocent, but Lucas intended to put the building to fitting use. Both Lucas and Ruby had done their grim work with bandannas over their noses and mouths. After grouping the dead as best they could, they emptied the contents of Hal’s jars on the wood they’d collected, also soaking as many of the bodies as possible.
Lucas stood with head bowed and said words while Ruby and Eve looked on, and then he lit a rag he’d stuffed into the top of one of the remaining jars, tossed the flaming container through the door, and turned to face the setting sun as flame licked from the building before consuming it.
Ruby took Lucas’s hand as they walked back to where they’d left the animals by the gate, and gave it a concerned squeeze. “You look like you could use some rest, Lucas.”
“Don’t think I’ll be able to sleep ever again, Ruby.”
“Come back to my place. It’s safe, and we can figure out what to do next.”
“I know what I plan to do.”
“Your horse is beat. So are you. And Eve here needs a bath and some food and drink.” Ruby studied Lucas’s profile. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“That’s what I thought. Come on, Lucas. You’ve got no place else to go. Do it as a favor to me. To Hal, God rest his soul.”
Lucas sighed and nodded agreement. “Always a bad idea to ride at night,” he conceded.
“I’ve got plenty of hay and apples for your horse. He looks like he’s had a rough go of it, too.” Ruby looked down at Eve. “You like apples?”
Eve looked confused. “I…I don’t know.”
Ruby smiled and patted her head. “Only one way to find out.”
Chapter 24
Houston, Texas
Orange flames shot into the air from bonfires around what had once been Lakewood Church, a mammoth auditorium that could seat almost seventeen thousand of the faithful in the days before the collapse. Now it served as the headquarters for the Crew, which had commandeered the facility several months after the city’s infrastructure had failed, with more than ninety-five percent of the population dead from disease and unrest. The Crew leader, Magnus, had been one of the hardest cases serving life in Beaumont, a United States penitentiary, when the grid had failed. Three days after the prison had been deserted by the staff, his gang had broken it open, just as they had prisons all over the state, and embarked on a terror spree that had become the stuff of whispered infamy.
By the time the dust had settled, Magnus had effective control over much of Texas, including Houston and the seaport, as well as Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas; his men’s rapacious violence and cold-blooded willingness to kill had overcome all resistance. When the state apparatus had crumbled as the monetary system failed, Magnus had seized the opportunity to become a regional warlord and ruled with impunity, there being no organization capable of opposing him. He’d earned the instant loyalty of the state’s surviving prison population when his gang had freed them, and with the help of this swarm of miscreants, his group’s influence had spread like wildfire.
As his crowning achievement in his old hometown, he’d taken over Ellington Field, the military base in Houston, and with the cache of weapons retrieved there, had systematically butchered anyone who might have posed a challenge to his reign – not that there were many after the flu had ravaged the nation and the government imploded. With no police or military to stop the spread of his gang, he’d offered the surviving residents a choice: obey him, or die.
Most chose life, and
with the cooperation of the remnants of the urban drug gangs, as well as the Mexican cartels which had crossed the unguarded border in search of easy prey, he’d built a criminal network that reveled in atrocity, no act too disgraceful or foul, no deed too despicable to celebrate.
Tonight, Magnus was overseeing a regular feature of his reign – a public execution of rivals, rule-breakers, resisters, and critics. Early into the collapse he’d discovered the old ways were best, and that it was prudent to demonstrate an absolute willingness to punish in the harshest possible manner even the smallest of violations. Beheadings, drawing and quartering, burning alive, hanging, bayonetting – all were favorites and ensured that the surviving population understood well the penalty for resistance.
Around him at an oversized conference table sat his advisors, a rogue’s gallery of felons and quislings, who despite their predilections for chaos and abomination had achieved some remarkable innovations. One man, Sax Whitely, had been an engineer before being convicted of the double murder of his ex-wife and her new husband, and he’d single-handedly brought limited power back to Dallas using a steam turbine he’d built, as well as to parts of Houston, using geothermal technology and equipment looted from throughout the state.
Whitely was the head of Magnus’s research group, which the warlord hoped he could parlay into greater influence when civilization inevitably reestablished itself. His current efforts included attempting to get one of the big Houston refineries operating again, but so far he hadn’t been able to, there being insufficient skilled labor, replacement parts, or power to drive it. Whitely was also searching for a way to revive the rail system using an ancient coal-burning locomotive in Dallas, in the hopes of spreading the Crew’s power even further.
Magnus held his empty cup aloft. “More rum!” he called, and one of his minions ran to fetch a bottle.
Magnus had taken his moniker while serving multiple life sentences in supermax prison for homicide and torture connected with his drug-trafficking, extortion, and racketeering ventures. While incarcerated he’d studied the history of the world’s great fortunes and had concluded that in times of extremes, wealth was more easily created. From the European banking dynasties, which had funded both sides of every armed conflict for at least two centuries, to American icons like the Rockefellers, whose riches were created in the opium trade before diversifying into oil and banking, to the Kennedy clan, whose patriarch had parlayed stock manipulations and bootlegging operations into the equivalent of an American royal family, cunning, treachery, amorality, and utter ruthlessness had played a large role in their fortunes. Magnus saw himself as a kindred spirit who simply hadn’t had the right opportunity. Until now.
The Day After Never (Book 1): Blood Honor Page 13