“Fricassee of rat,” Duke said with a grin.
“Been a while since I had fricassee.”
“You’ll never forget this one.”
The meal was actually fresh fish from the reservoir, accompanied by corn and potatoes. Preparation took an hour, and when the meal was ready, the men ate until they couldn’t swallow another mouthful. Doug carried a plate out to Travis, another of Duke’s entourage who was working guard duty, while Lucas stood beside the woman, who had been moved to a dilapidated sofa they’d covered with a clean sheet.
Duke joined him and felt her forehead. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and ducked into his bedroom. When he returned, he was holding a glass thermometer. He pulled back the sheet, exposing her bandaged chest, and slid it beneath her underarm. “She’s lucky the bullet didn’t ricochet and do more damage. Missed her lung by half an inch, no more. Weird that it didn’t exit, though. Shoulder blade must have stopped it.”
Lucas hadn’t told him about the woman’s body armor.
Duke removed the thermometer and shook his head. “She’s burning up. Not good.”
“Anything else you can do?”
“Not really.”
Lucas strode to the door and swung it open. Duke followed him out and stood by his side as he saddled up, making small talk. When Lucas was finished, he patted Tango’s flank absently and adjusted his hat.
“Not very busy today, huh?” Lucas asked.
“You missed a couple of traders from down Pecos way, while you were sleeping.”
“Yeah? What did they get?”
“Swapped me the corn we ate and some other odds and ends for a peashooter. Wanted a varmint rifle, .22 long, for hunting.”
“They say anything about how it is down there?”
Duke’s expression darkened. “Not good.”
“Where were they from?”
“Didn’t get specific.”
“Ah.”
Rifle shots rang out in the distance, faint but clear in the crisp air, and both men froze.
Chapter 6
“You hear that?” Duke whispered.
“Yep.”
“Sound like it came from the north, didn’t it?”
Lucas nodded, his face grim. “Up the highway.”
They exchanged a glance. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Duke asked.
Another nod from Lucas. “He took the road. You told him not to.”
“Let me try his radio. He’s got a two-way. He should still be in range.”
They returned to the building, and Duke retrieved a handset from a row by the shortwave radio and powered it on. The trader spoke rapidly, depressing the transmit button as he did, and then released it, listening.
Nothing but white noise.
Duke tried again with the same result and shook his head as he replaced the radio in the base. “You know as much as I do.”
Another shot reached them, this one even fainter. Lucas glowered at the open door and made for it. “Time to ride.”
“You going after him?”
“Don’t see any choice.”
“I’d send a man, but…”
“I know.”
Duke’s hired hands earned their keep defending the trading post; Clem’s absence had already weakened their ability to do so. Duke couldn’t spare anyone further, especially with evening approaching. “He knew the risk.”
“Might have been some other poor soul.”
“Quite a coincidence if it was.”
Neither man believed in coincidence.
Lucas retrieved his M4 from his saddlebag, checked the magazine, and swung up into the saddle. “Time’s a-wasting.”
“Watch your back.”
Lucas rode through the gate, his eyes blazing, both at the idea that Clem could have been foolish enough to ignore his warning and at the ramifications for the woman’s survival if he had. Duke’s men were tough, but perhaps they’d spent too much time behind the walls of the compound. All it took to lose your life out in the open was one poor decision. He hoped Clem had been smarter than that, but a coil of anxiety twisted tight in his stomach, warning him not to expect much.
He tracked Clem’s horse to a trail that skirted the river and followed it at a trot. Normally he’d have let Tango set the pace, but he didn’t have the luxury of letting up until he’d confirmed what had happened. Half an hour north, his worst suspicions were confirmed – the hoofprints veered left toward the highway a half mile away.
Rather than making the same mistake Clem had, Lucas slowed and picked his way along the river, using a game trail wide enough for Tango to navigate without any problem. At a tributary fork, he was forced to use a two-lane road that led to a bridge over the wide canyon, and the hair on the back of his arms stood up as he galloped across it, no cover anywhere if a sniper wanted to take a crack at him. He varied Tango’s speed, listening for any telltales, but heard nothing other than the wind and the rush of water below as the river roared past.
Once across, Lucas weighed his options and slowed to allow Tango to catch his breath. As he did so, he spotted dust from the vicinity of the highway. He retrieved his binoculars from his saddlebag and draped the strap around his neck as he gazed through them. Definitely a dust cloud, and from more than one rider, by its size.
He continued north along another trail and, when he estimated that he was well clear of the riders, directed Tango toward the highway, his M4 at the ready. Fifteen minutes later he reached the road and stopped near some bushes to dismount.
The tracks in the dust that coated the road were fresh and looked like at least a dozen riders. That they were riding down the middle of the highway told Lucas that they weren’t concerned about detection – they were the most dangerous thing on the road.
He looked north and raised the glasses to his eyes. The highway was largely flat, with only a few skeletal vehicle chassis rusting where they’d stalled on the shoulder. It never failed to amaze him how survivors inevitably pulled to the side as their cars ran out of fuel, hope springing eternal that they’d be able to find more and return, he supposed – a hope that never came to pass. His grandfather had tinkered with the idea of refining his corn alcohol into fuel that could safely power a car, but he’d dismissed the idea as time had passed, based on Lucas’s admonition that an operating vehicle would be an open invitation to be shot apart, the engine noise providing ample signal in a landscape devoid of sound. Lucas was sure that plenty, surely the military, had managed the feat; but to him, in God’s country, the concept of presenting a target to the plentiful predators was suicide.
He returned to Tango, remounted, and guided him off the road, along a trail that ran parallel, crossing farmland that had gone unplanted or watered for half a decade, any fences blown down by the tornadoes that infrequently roared across the land. He stopped after what he reckoned was a quarter mile and eyed the highway again, and this time saw the distinctive form of a body on the far shoulder.
Lucas rode hard and was off Tango in a flash when he reached Clem’s fallen form. He leaned forward and rolled the man onto his back, ignoring the flies that had already begun swarming around his head. A bullet hole, small caliber judging by the entry wound in his temple and lack of an exit hole, was crusted with coagulated blood, and Clem’s open eyes were vacant. Lucas took in the mangled fingers and broken arm – clear evidence of torture. He noted the two wounds in Clem’s abdomen that his flak vest had partially stopped before the ceramic plate had shattered; those would have been the rifle shots they’d first heard, the final shot the coup de grace after a hurried interrogation. There was no doubt that Clem had told his killers whatever they wanted to know. Anyone would have.
He’d seen every manner of atrocity over his years as a lawman; then, as a survivor, found the handiwork of the outlaw gangs worse than anything he’d imagined prior to the collapse. Even so, why torture a rider before killing him? It wasn’t as though he’d been carrying anything but his gun, which was missing, as was
his horse, both no doubt stolen by the shooters.
He dragged Clem off the shoulder and into the brush, more than aware that it would be dark soon, and considered his next step. The soil was soft – it wouldn’t take him long to dig a shallow grave and bury the dead man, sparing him the indignity of being picked apart by the carrion birds. Besides which, Tango was breathing hard and needed a chance to get his wind, so Lucas pulled his collapsible camp shovel from a saddlebag and began digging, his mind working furiously.
He could keep riding north for another three to four hours, the final stretch in the dark, get the medicine for the woman, and leave Tango in town while he rode back to the trading post – again, at night. Alternatively, he could ride back to the outpost and give Duke the bad news, foregoing the meds, which might well be the woman’s death sentence. Neither choice was a good one.
He stood back, sweat streaming down his face, and examined the trench he’d created.
“It’ll have to do,” he muttered, and after setting the shovel down, dragged Clem’s body to the depression and rolled it in. Lucas refilled the grave with dirt and stepped away, looking around. He spied a decent-sized rock and carried it to the mound, lay it at the head of the grave, and stood with hat in hand as he said a prayer.
If he was hoping for divine guidance on which path to choose, it came in the form of automatic rifle fire from the south, as distant as the shots that had brought down Clem.
Lucas nodded. Of course. That was why they’d tortured Clem – to learn what he knew about Duke’s defenses.
The riders were attacking the trading post.
The deep staccato bark of Duke’s big .50 caliber machine gun made Lucas’s decision for him. The battle was joined.
And Lucas wasn’t one to run from a fight.
He leapt onto Tango’s back and pointed the horse south, his decision made. He would help his friends and worry about the problem of the woman later. If the trading post were breached, she’d be worse than dead anyway, so the imperative was to stop that from happening.
Lucas was under no illusion that doing so would be easy or without risk.
But there was no alternative.
He just hoped he could make it in time.
Chapter 7
The gloaming darkened the sky as Lucas rounded the final bend on the trail to the trading post. He’d avoided the highway, retracing his route down the secondary road and the track along the river as gunfire echoed from Duke’s compound. The shooting was still going on, but with less intensity, the attackers probably conserving their ammunition until they could make a push after dark. They’d apparently underestimated the extent of the trading post’s defenses, and he was sure that Duke and his men were making them pay dearly for the mistake.
Lucas had taken his return easy and allowed Tango to set a comfortable pace, resisting the impulse to spur him to a gallop, unsure how much more travel the brave horse would have to be capable of before the night was over. Tango was ordinarily able to cover a solid forty or more miles a day after a night’s rest, but he hadn’t had that luxury, and Lucas was aware that he’d keep pushing to please his master until he dropped from exhaustion.
The gunfire was deafening now that Lucas was near. He tied Tango to a tree away from the fight and moved stealthily toward the trading post. By the time he’d covered the final quarter mile on foot and was close enough to see muzzle flashes, it was completely dark, which would work in his favor, given his night vision scope.
The attackers, unaware of his arrival, would believe the threat to be entirely in front of them. Any shooting from their flank or behind would be assumed to be coming from one of their number. If Lucas was lucky, he might be able to take most of them out before they realized what was happening, depending on how they were positioned.
He had four spare magazines in his flak vest and one in each back pocket of his jeans, giving him 210 rounds, including the magazine in his rifle. Assuming he was careful with his fire, it would be more than enough, although it was always better to expect the worst.
Lucas surveyed the field around the trading post and spotted three shooters to his right, maybe a hundred yards away. Beyond them, he saw two more gunmen firing intermittently. He raised the M4 to peer through the NV scope and saw a shooter to his left and what might have been two more – he couldn’t be sure, given the tall grass.
Nothing much seemed to be happening – nobody was moving, the assault force having learned the hard way that they had walked into a killing field. Lucas hoped that Duke’s men had neutralized a fair number of the attackers.
He crept toward the first shooter on his left and, when he was sixty yards away, put a three-round burst into the man’s torso. Lucas waited for incoming fire, but none answered his salvo, vindicating his strategy – at least for now.
Lucas repeated his maneuver, continuing left, and realized that what he’d thought was another shooter were in fact two, side by side. That would make things tougher for him, but not impossible. He switched the M4’s fire selector switch to three-round burst mode and sidled closer, biding his time as occasional salvos rattled from the attackers’ guns, answered in kind from the trading post.
Lucas dog-crawled another ten yards and took aim at the pair in front of him. He was about to fire when four high-wattage spotlights on the trading post roof blinked to life, illuminating the field with a blinding glare. He ducked down in the grass as bullets whizzed around him from the compound, and realized belatedly that Duke and his men thought he was one of the attackers.
The gunmen to his right opened fire at the lamps, and one by one they blinked out, but not before he heard an anguished scream from his left. One of the pair had been hit – how badly remained to be seen. Lucas closed his eyes in an effort to regain his night vision as quickly as possible and, when he could make out the silhouette of the trading post again, took careful aim through the PVS-14 night vision scope.
One of the group on his right called out, and a man clambered to his feet. Lucas fired a burst and then another, and the man went down hard. His companion returned fire at Lucas, and he sprayed the area with the remainder of his magazine, the downed man impossible to make out in the grass. Better to be sure he was out of the fight than discover from a bullet to the back that he had only been wounded.
Lucas ejected the spent magazine and slapped another into place, and then the soil around him fountained as rounds pounded into the earth. Lucas rolled, his pulse thudding in his ears, trying to ascertain whether the latest salvo was from the trading post or the attackers. Another burst shredded the dirt to his right and he had his answer – the attackers were onto him.
A long rattle issued from the sandbags by the gate. The three men who had shot at Lucas spread out as bullets tore the grass near them to shreds. One grunted as several rounds found him, and then Lucas joined in with his M4, creating a lethal crossfire with his rifle, its fresh magazine empty in a matter of seconds.
He slapped home another magazine and caught motion from the corner of his eye. The pair that had been two hundred yards away to his right were on the move, rushing the trading post, confused by the shooting that was coming from Lucas on their left. He loosed burst after burst, but his shots went wide, the men moving too erratically. He watched as they neared the compound wall and gasped when one hurled a grenade over it before taking cover against the outside of the wall.
The blast from the grenade’s detonation flared orange from the trading post grounds, and Lucas forced his breathing slower and zeroed in on the visible shooter. Lucas would have to drop him – from inside the compound he was out of Duke’s line of sight, having made it close enough that the wall shielded him from exposure. If the man had more grenades, he could continue to lob them from his position at the base of the wall, inflicting maximum damage without firing another shot.
Lucas exhaled as he squeezed the trigger. His first rounds were low, and he raised his aim slightly and stitched the man to the wall with his second and third bursts.
Which left one more shooter.
Who’d bugged out and was nowhere to be seen.
Lucas waited for the man to show himself. A minute went by with no more shooting. Another passed, and he swore under his breath. He couldn’t very well lie in the grass until morning, but if he called out to the trading post, he would give himself away.
Discretion being the better part of survival, he waited. And waited.
After ten minutes, he dared a glance at the glowing hands of his watch and rolled onto his back. He cupped his hands, tilted his head, and called out at the top of his lungs.
“Duke! It’s Lucas. Don’t shoot.”
A voice answered – Duke’s.
“See any hostiles?”
“Negative, but assume they’re out here.”
A long pause. “What do you want me to do?”
“Push that big wooden cart of yours out for cover. I’d be much obliged.”
“You serious?”
“I took down four of them for you. Least you can do.”
Several minutes later the gate opened, and a cart laden with crates and sacks creaked out of the compound, pulled by a mule that looked as unenthusiastic as any beast Lucas had seen. Behind it followed Aaron with an AK, a spare magazine combat taped to the one in the weapon for a quick change. Lucas crawled toward the cart as it rolled forward and, when the mule was thirty yards away, drove himself to his feet and sprinted toward the cart as Aaron swept the field with his muzzle. When Lucas reached him, he pressed against the rear of the cart and glanced around.
“There was one left that I could see. Looks like he took off,” Lucas said in a loud whisper, more than aware they were all half-deaf from the gunfire.
“We can get some more lights up and confirm that,” Aaron said.
Lucas eyed him. “Any casualties?”
“Travis bought it. Doug’s wounded, but he’ll live.”
Lucas nodded. “Let’s get behind the walls and turn some lamps on.”
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 5