The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels)

by Russell Blake

  “Let’s start them up. We’ll lead the way,” Lucas said. They’d agreed that he, Colt, Sierra, and Eve would ride in the first Humvee, and Duke, Aaron, and Luis in the second, with the cargo areas packed with gear. All the chosen vehicles had been started the night before to verify their batteries would turn over, and the drivers were awaiting the word from Lucas to roll.

  The roar of truck exhausts filled the air as the four horse trailers started their motors, followed closely by the pair of buses carrying the wounded and the rest of the survivors. Lucas twisted the ignition and the Humvee’s engine ground to life. He waved out the window and eased the vehicle in a slow circle, the truck’s oversized tires crunching on the gravel shoulder as the trailers maneuvered to turn around. Five minutes later, the column was traversing the highway back toward the junction that led north as Lucas and Colt watched for threats, the unimaginable luxury of air conditioning drying the sweat on their faces as Sierra and Eve contented themselves in the rear seat.

  They reached the deserted hamlet of Pojoaque and pushed past several abandoned cars, and then picked up speed along the ribbon of asphalt that stretched into the distance, the sky a vibrant turquoise streaked with high wisps of white. The trucks crossed the Rio Grande at Española and proceeded through a landscape of bluffs eroded over eons, red clay faces stark against the backdrop of unending beige and muted green scrub. Heat waves rose from the pavement and distorted the two-lane highway, lending it an otherworldly quality under the relentless sun.

  Two hours into the trip one of the trailers lost a tire, and they were forced to wait while the men changed it. They’d loaded as many good spares as they could fit and still have room for the animals and equipment, but the first tire they tried, its sidewalls brittle as parchment, popped like a balloon when the truck’s weight settled on it. The second proved sturdier, and the vehicles lurched forward once again, keeping their speed to a minimum in order to conserve fuel and minimize the damage to the rubber from the scorching road.

  They reached the dam at midday, where they found Elliot waiting in the shade of a grove of trees fifty yards off the road. When the horses and gear were loaded, they resumed winding along the highway through canyons striated with russet and beige, the temperature now in the triple digits.

  “The poor horses,” Sierra said, her hair stirred by the air conditioning. “It must be brutal in those trailers.”

  Lucas nodded, eyes on the road. “Probably. But still better than having to walk.”

  “I don’t know about that. At least they’d be in the open. I’d get claustrophobic in a carrier.”

  “Can’t be helped,” Colt said gruffly.

  “How’s the snakebite?” Sierra asked him.

  “Almost healed. Although I won’t be offering dancing lessons anytime soon.” He twisted to look at Lucas. “I can spell you whenever you get tired of driving.”

  “Appreciate it. I’ll let you know when that happens,” Lucas said.

  “We going to keep driving after dark?” Sierra asked.

  “Probably not. The scouts were attacked between here and Pagosa Springs. If we find an area we can easily defend, that would be better than trying to fight it out on the road in a location they pick.”

  “And if we don’t find one?”

  Lucas scowled at the windshield. “Then we’ll circle the wagons and keep the big guns trained on either side of the road. Anyone stupid enough to take us on won’t last long.”

  Colt eyed the Humvee behind them in the side mirror, its .50-caliber machine gun pointed at the sky, and nodded. “Let’s hope so. They’ll definitely hear us coming, no matter what.”

  “They’d have to be suicidal to try to ambush a motorized column, wouldn’t they?” Sierra asked, her eyes fearful.

  Lucas’s lips formed a thin line. “Or desperate. Lot of that going around these days.”

  Chapter 5

  Houston, Texas

  Snake listened intently as Dale, the scout he’d dispatched from Lubbock to Albuquerque following the debacle in Los Alamos, reported in via shortwave radio. It had taken Dale nearly a week to cross the state and arrive in New Mexico, where he’d rendezvoused with the shell-shocked survivors of the battle.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow to see if we can pick up the scent, but we’re not hopeful. There’s no way they’re still there.”

  “We don’t know that. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s possible they believe they’re safe now,” Snake said.

  Dale didn’t sound convinced, but didn’t argue the point. “I’ll proceed as agreed.”

  Their communications had been brief and largely coded. There was no question in Snake’s mind that someone from Shangri-La might be monitoring transmissions, but issuing orders was a risk he had to take.

  Dale was a bulldog of a man who was unstoppable once given a task. He’d served several of Snake’s pet causes and had yet to meet with failure, his tenacity one of his favorable traits, coupled with his willingness to do anything required to achieve an objective. Under Snake’s direction, he’d dismembered rivals, incinerated whole families, pursued rebellious subordinates and terminated them, never questioning his orders or the legitimacy of his methods.

  When Snake had made the decision to send Dale alone rather than a score of fighters, it had been a risk, given that Snake might be perceived as showing too little interest in evening the score for the defeat of the Crew, not to mention the death of its leader. Snake had entertained debate on it among his circle, but ultimately determined that one competent man would stand as good a chance as a dozen – Magnus’s rout had more than adequately demonstrated that large numbers didn’t necessarily guarantee successful outcomes.

  Snake stepped away from the radio with a frown. His enthusiasm for continuing Magnus’s crusade was close to zero; the toll of a thousand men was incredible to him personally and a threat to the Crew’s influence, and also left him shorthanded in Houston and having to pull men from Dallas and other Crew hubs. Word had spread of the defeat, and he was already hearing rumors of isolated outbreaks of revolt in some of the outlying areas, which he’d instructed his lieutenants to put down with extreme prejudice. There could be only one way of dealing with rebellion, and that was with shock and awe.

  But there was also the matter of saving face. If he didn’t at least attempt to follow up on Magnus’s mission, which had been largely supported by the Crew rank and file, it would further weaken his claim to the throne in their eyes. So he was stuck devoting resources to a cause he didn’t believe in, although the chances of Dale finding the Shangri-La survivors were exceedingly slim. Only an idiot would remain in the valley now that the Crew knew the location, and nothing about the group that had wiped the floor with Magnus’s best fighters struck Snake as foolish. On the contrary, the Shangri-La defenders had proved more than a match for a far larger force and had shown remarkable innovation in their guerilla tactics, based on the accounts of the Crew survivors.

  Snake’s strategy was to go through the motions to placate Magnus’s loyalists while he consolidated power. Even if by some miracle they located the Shangri-La survivors, he had little interest in mobilizing another army if he didn’t have to – his hands were already full dealing with the realities of his regime change.

  He’d organized an advisory council and after some turmoil had ten strong hands whose opinions he trusted. All had agreed that it would be foolhardy to go on the attack right now; it would be better to focus on developing the vaccine Lubbock was working on, and contend with the Shangri-La variant if and when it surfaced. Given the level of difficulty his big brains were having developing an effective solution to the virus, Snake doubted that a group on the run in the wilds could do better.

  Then again, Magnus had been sure that destroying Shangri-La would be shooting fish in a barrel, and it had been that hubris that had cost him everything.

  Snake wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, Lucas emerged from
his tent to find Elliot and Michael standing with Arnold, their grim expressions just visible in the dim predawn. They’d made it more than halfway to Pagosa Springs with only one pause for another blown tire before stopping for the night, but the fuel gauges were ominously low, and even at crawling speed it was obvious they wouldn’t be able to stretch the diesel all the way.

  Lucas nodded to them and fit his hat into place.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Two more of the wounded didn’t make it,” Elliot replied, his tone dispirited.

  “Always a risk.”

  “Yes. But it’s one thing to risk, another to lose.” Elliot sighed. “We were just discussing where to bury them.”

  Lucas checked his watch. “Have to be by the side of the road. We don’t have a lot of time if we’re going to make it to Pagosa by nightfall.”

  Arnold grunted. “I’ll get some shovels.”

  “And I’ll rouse the gang so we can get under way when we’re done,” Michael said.

  The soil was hard as brick, and the burial took forty-five minutes even with three men working hard. When the remains of the pair were interred, the survivors stood in a ragged semicircle around the freshly turned earth mounds, and Elliot said a heartfelt prayer. The gathering murmured an amen, and then Elliot raised his head and addressed the crowd.

  “Even as we head to a new home, a new beginning, the hardships follow us. It was my decision to transport the wounded. I take full responsibility. Believe me when I say that a part of me was just buried as well.”

  Sarah, the doctor, laid a hand on his shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done, Elliot. They wouldn’t have lasted the week no matter what you’d done. They were both very badly wounded.”

  Elliot nodded, too choked up to speak, and Arnold cleared his throat. “Let’s load up. We need to get some miles under our belt before the heat rises.”

  The group dispersed and made its way to the buses. Sierra took Lucas’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I hope this was the right decision. Seems like death follows us wherever we go.”

  Lucas looked into her eyes. “That’s the world we live in. We didn’t ask for it, but we’ll damn sure deal it out when it comes looking.”

  “I just wish we could catch a break.”

  Lucas shook his head ruefully. “Afraid this is the break.”

  The engines started again and the procession rolled forward through the inch of sand that covered the road, only a few rusting vehicles impeding their progress as the sun ascended overhead. The grade steepened when they entered the mountains, and the landscape grew green and lush, with pine trees appearing along the route, fronted by tall grass billowing in the wind.

  When the first horse trailer motor coughed several times and then stalled, Lucas was unsurprised. He glanced down at the odometer and braked.

  “How are you boys doing?” he called to the drivers from his window.

  “On fumes,” the first said. The others echoed the news. Lucas stepped from the Humvee and strode to the nearest bus. He climbed aboard to look at the fuel gauge and then shook his head.

  “We knew this would happen. The good news is we’re only twenty or so miles away, tops. The bad news is we can’t run the trucks dry – they’d leave a trail even a blind man could find, and it would be only a matter of time before we attracted the wrong kind of attention,” he said to Elliot, whose bulk filled the doorway as the passengers looked on. Lucas turned back to the faces staring at him. “So this is it. Everybody out. We’ll off-load the horses and find somewhere we can ditch the trucks where they won’t be obvious.”

  Lucas pushed past Elliot to where Arnold was waiting at the roadside, one hand shielding his eyes from the glare. “Arnold, help me siphon a gallon for the stopped trailer so we can get it off the road.” He paused. “You see anywhere promising we can leave these rigs?”

  Arnold nodded and pointed to his right. “Looks like there’s a drop there. Might want to ride over and see how far down. Best would be if the trucks wound up where nobody would find them for a long time. Weather should take care of the rest.”

  “Got to get the horses off the trucks anyway. Probably itching to stretch their legs,” Lucas agreed.

  “This is their chance.”

  They made their way to where six men, including Duke and Aaron, were unloading the animals, and claimed their mounts. A short ride south yielded no love – the gulley there was too shallow to conceal the remains of the column. It was to the west of the highway that they hit pay dirt – a steep gorge with the remains of a fire access road running along its crest.

  Lucas and Arnold exchanged a satisfied look and rode back to the trucks. When everything had been off-loaded, they directed the drivers to the area they’d found and instructed them to use heavy stones to hold down the throttles in first gear and then jump clear of the vehicles at the edge of the drop.

  The process took fifteen minutes, and the only evidence left when they were through was a curl of black smoke from one of the buses. Lucas checked the time as Tango ambled alongside the drivers trudging back to the road – it would be tough, but they could make it to Pagosa Springs by night if they pushed.

  The wounded were loaded onto carts along with the precious equipment from the lab and machine shop, and they continued up the paved grade after the two Humvees, the horses trailing the vehicles in a line. Colt studied Lucas’s profile while he negotiated the twisting route and frowned. “Think we’ll make it without running out of gas?”

  Lucas tapped the fuel gauge and nodded. “We should. That’s one of the things we’ve called right so far.”

  “Let’s hope we’re also right about Pagosa. With the wounded and all the gear, we don’t have a lot of good options.”

  “True. And there’s going to be logistical issues once we arrive. I’ve never been there, but if there’s a road running through it, we won’t be able to hide out like you did in the valley. Eventually someone will stumble across it, and we’ll need a coherent response.”

  Colt smiled. “That’s what Arnold’s for.”

  Lucas wiped a bead of sweat from his cheek and sat back in the driver’s seat, the landscape crawling by at a snail’s pace. “Better him than me.”

  “What do you make of the ex-Crew guy? Luis?”

  Lucas considered his next words, which were guarded. “So far, so good.”

  “I don’t like him. There’s a jailhouse stink to him.”

  Lucas nodded. “He’s no saint. But he seems to be pulling on the oars with us. That’s what counts, right?”

  Colt stared through the side window, lost in thought. When he turned toward Lucas, his voice was low. “For now.”

  Chapter 7

  Elliot called a halt to the trip as it got dark. Their destination was still several hours away, but the ride was more arduous than they’d expected, due to the elevation and the amount of weight the horses were hauling. The survivors once again pitched camp by the side of the road with an armed Humvee facing in each direction and a sentry on guard, spelled every three hours, to enable them to sleep.

  They’d lost one more injured fighter that afternoon, and the group offered a brief prayer while the sun dropped behind the mountains, heads bowed as the air cooled in the gloaming. When they were done, the mood was somber, and they ate and spoke in hushed tones, extinguishing their small fires quickly once their rations had been warmed.

  Lucas spent a restless night tossing and turning, his dreams filled with nightmarish visions of those he’d killed. When he finally dragged himself from his tent at dawn, his eyes were red and the shadows beneath them pronounced. He glanced around at the dense ground fog that gave the impression they were floating in a cloud and inhaled the crisp mountain air to clear his head. After a brief meal washed down with water, his melancholy cleared and he was ready to go. He spent a few minutes with Tango, smoothing his mane and whispering to him, and then waited by the Humvee with his kit packed while the rest of the party prepared t
o mount up.

  Sierra approached, gave him an appraising look, and shook her head. “Tough night?” she asked.

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Well, it’s almost over. We’ll be there soon, right?”

  “Should be there in a couple hours.”

  His guess proved optimistic; the final leg took closer to three. When they turned off the highway at a faded stone sign welcoming them to Pagosa Springs, he exhaled in silent relief and managed a small smile for Eve, who was peering through her window with an expression of wonder at the San Juan River. The column crossed the river over a bridge, and Lucas spotted a pair of riders awaiting their arrival at the far end of the main street. One of the men waved his rifle overhead, and Lucas increased his speed slightly, mindful of the animals in tow.

  He stopped when he reached the scouts and leaned his head through the open window.

  “Morning.”

  The older of the two nodded. “It’s a nice one.”

  “You find a good area to off-load our gear?”

  “Couple.”

  “Lead the way.”

  He followed the scouts to a pair of resorts near the river and shut the engine off to conserve what little fuel remained. A sign on the closest announced a hot springs spa and restaurant. Lucas stepped down from the Humvee with Sierra and Eve in tow as Elliot approached from the other vehicle, eyes on Colt. The scouts dismounted, and one of them approached Lucas.

  “We set up in that one,” the man said, pointing at the resort on the riverbank. “Water’s unbelievable. And the place is really nice, even after all these years.”

  Elliot nodded. “Lovely. But we can’t all fit in those two buildings.”

  “True. But we searched some of the houses – most of them are in decent shape. With a little work, we should be able to rehab them and they’ll be fine.”