Chapter 17
After fifteen days of hard riding, Lucas’s group was finally nearing Tulsa. The area they’d covered over the last few days had been surprisingly lush and green after the unvaried flatness of the high plains prairie they’d left behind. They’d spent the night under the stars, glad that the rain that had plagued them on and off the last week had abated, leaving the swell of the hills bursting with color and life.
They had skirted the inhabited settlements: Amarillo, a shadow of its former self, and Oklahoma City, the northern limit of the Crew’s territory and so to be avoided at all costs. Travelers along the stretch they’d negotiated had been few and far between, and on the three occasions they’d spotted dust clouds on the horizon, they’d gone to ground and waited for the parties to pass at a safe distance.
By Lucas’s reckoning, they would reach the compound by mid-afternoon, and if all went well, would be riding south toward Mississippi by evening, taking their time, posing as traders in the Crew territory and hoping that they went unchallenged in the outer reaches of the empire.
He had no firm plan for narrowing down whether Sierra’s son had somehow survived the attack on the compound where he’d been living other than to make his way there and poke around. Perhaps there were people living nearby who’d heard about it or who could point them in the right direction. The alternatives grew increasingly unappealing as he went down the list, which included traveling into the belly of the beast and asking questions that would, without a doubt, have the Crew pursuing them within minutes.
The trip had been a monotonous plod across the high plains. Arnold had proved a hardy and resourceful traveling companion, though, as had Colt, George, and John, all serious men with enough trail time to avoid stupid mistakes that could get them killed. They’d kept two-hour watches throughout each night so everyone would be adequately rested as they made their way east beneath a sky as blue as the ocean.
They turned from the trail onto a ribbon of pavement, and after checking Arnold’s ragged map, paused to rest and water the horses as Arnold took a bearing.
“This has got to be the road. Compound should be up another half dozen miles, no more,” he said.
“Finally,” Sierra said. “I was beginning to mistake the saddle for part of my anatomy.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to re-provision and rest a couple of days before the next leg,” Lucas said.
“No,” Sierra countered. “I want to keep going.”
His tone softened. “The horses need a break, Sierra. A day or two won’t matter to us, but it will to them.”
“It’s already been months, Lucas.”
“Which is why it won’t change anything. They can’t keep this up forever.”
Sierra nodded, but he could tell she wasn’t happy. He took her hand and pointed at the surrounding trees. “Leaves are turning,” he said. She glanced at the red and orange leaves clinging to the branches with obvious disinterest.
“Probably snowing by now in Pagosa Springs,” Colt observed.
“Hard to say,” Arnold said. “We’ll check in after we make the drop and I’ll ask.”
They continued riding toward Tulsa, and after another hour Colt slowed and eyed a sign by the side of a gravel drive that led to a walled collection of buildings a quarter mile away. “Barrelback Ranch. That’s our place.”
Lucas was the first to stop as they neared the compound’s main gate. He eyed the open barrier and unslung his M4, switching the safety to three-round burst mode with his thumb as he scanned the perimeter wall. Arnold drew to a halt beside him and his eyes narrowed when he saw the gate.
“Might be trouble,” he muttered, his AR-15 now in hand. The others followed suit, and they continued toward the opening at a cautious pace.
Sierra’s hand flew to her mouth when they reached the gate, and she gasped and pointed to a body sprawled just inside. A vulture flapped from it, and three more took flight, clawing their way skyward before soaring away. Nobody spoke as Lucas dropped from his horse. Arnold joined him, and they edged slowly to the entrance, weapons at the ready.
The breeze shifted, and a wave of putrescence hit them with the force of a blow. Lucas’s jaw clenched as he strode toward the gap, the odor of death unmistakable. Arnold’s boots crunched against the gravel as they swept the area with their guns, searching for any sign of life.
They stopped at the gate and regarded the grounds, eyes flat, unmoved by the grisly vision before them. Dozens of bodies lay near the buildings: their torsos had been hacked open, and their skulls streaked with black blood. Their scalps were missing. Lucas walked toward the doorway of the largest structure and noted women and children among the dead, all mutilated in the same way. Bile rose sour in his throat as he took in the hellish tableau.
“Jesus God…” Arnold muttered, and Lucas nodded.
“Yeah. Bad as it gets.”
Arnold toed a nearby body. “They haven’t been dead that long. Probably last night, don’t you think?”
Lucas took in a pair of tiny corpses discarded like trash by the entrance of what must have been a barn, the blood around them dried and hard. “Sounds about right.”
They walked back to where Sierra was waiting outside the compound entrance with Colt and the others, their faces pale. “What is it, Lucas?” she asked.
“Stay here and watch the horses – make sure they don’t run off. Colt, boys, we could use a hand.”
“What happened?” Sierra repeated.
“Looks like someone attacked them. I want to search the buildings to make sure there are no survivors.”
“How many?” George asked.
Lucas’s deep frown told the story. “A bunch.”
They returned to the interior of the compound and moved through the carnage to the main building, a sprawling ranch house of at least six thousand square feet. Inside was a disaster, and Lucas had a brief flashback to arriving at Hal’s ranch only to find him dead and the place looted, the destruction as random and senseless as if a tornado had blown through it.
Half an hour later, they’d confirmed that everyone was dead. When they were through, they stood by the gate, gulping fresh air. The only sound was the low buzz of thousands of flies feasting on the remains and the occasional snort of one of the horses.
“Looks like they tried to hold off whoever did this,” Arnold observed, touching one of hundreds of bullet scars pocking the mortar.
“Must have been a lot of attackers, most of the compound asleep,” Lucas agreed. “They hit fast and hard and overwhelmed the sentries. Only way it makes sense.”
“Some of the defenders tried to shoot it out once they were inside the walls.”
“Those were the lucky ones,” Colt said. “They died quickly.”
“What do we do now?” George asked.
“Too many of them to cremate or bury,” Arnold observed. “Whatever this was, it’s a change of plans for us. We need to put some miles under our saddles or risk running into whoever did this.”
“Timing’s awful coincidental, don’t you think?” Lucas asked.
Arnold nodded. “Yep.”
“You think we might have a leak back at Pagosa Springs?” Colt asked softly.
Lucas shook his head. “Doubt it. Anyone who wanted to sell you out had their chance when Magnus attacked.”
“Not necessarily.”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “Spit it out, Colt.”
“The Loco – Luis – had just arrived. We know he was afraid of Magnus, but maybe he’s interested in getting Pecos back for himself.”
Lucas shook his head again. “I don’t buy it.”
“Then how could they have known about…this?”
Lucas shrugged. “That’s a mystery.”
“So what now?” George repeated.
Arnold kicked away a rock and sighed. “We need to find a radio so we can talk to Elliot and let him know what happened. This is his show.”
Lucas retraced his steps to Sierra a
nd the horses. He gave her a brief rundown on what they’d found, leaving out the worst of it. The skin of her face was tight as parchment by the time he finished and her eyes moist.
“Why, Lucas? Why the mutilation?” She didn’t have to ask why the inhabitants had been killed. After five years living in the abyss, she accepted that there was no rhyme or reason to death – it was merely another regular visitor, like hunger, thirst, or rain.
“Don’t know.” He sighed. “We’ll head to Tulsa and look for a trading post with a shortwave.”
“And then?”
He stared off at the main road and adjusted his hat so it better shaded his eyes. When he looked back at Sierra, his face was expressionless.
“Not my call.”
“This changes everything, Lucas,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“We should just bail now. We did our part. This isn’t our problem.”
Lucas looked back at where Arnold was speaking with the men in low tones and shook his head. “Tempting. But that wasn’t the deal.”
“We got the vaccine to where we were supposed to deliver it. I’d say that was the deal.”
Lucas didn’t want to argue. He walked over to Tango and patted the big horse’s neck affectionately before swinging into the saddle. “Let’s get this over with. Time’s a-wasting.”
She eyed him uncomprehendingly and then her shoulders slumped with resignation.
“Do you think we’re safe, Lucas? From whoever did this?”
“Seems that way. At least for now.”
Arnold led the men back toward their horses, and Sierra pulled herself onto Nugget with a wince. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.
Lucas caught Arnold’s dark expression and shrugged. “For now, playing it by ear.”
“Good way to get killed.”
Lucas couldn’t fight her on that. “I know.”
Chapter 18
Pagosa Springs, Colorado
The lights in the community center dimmed and flickered for the umpteenth time that day, and Elliot glowered at them like they were failing just to spite him. Michael clapped a hand on his shoulder in commiseration and turned his attention to Craig, who’d arrived five minutes before to report on a problem at the geothermal plant.
“Generator’s failing, Doc,” the engineer said, hat in hand.
“Same as last time?”
Craig shook his head. “Worse. I jury-rigged it last time. That held for a while. But ever since that pump failed, it’s been operating on fewer than it was designed for. It’s just a matter of time until that damages some of the other components.”
“Is it overheating?” Michael asked.
“It’s more complicated than that. These were experimental units, not final designs. They were never intended to provide round-the-clock power like we’ve been drawing.”
“Would shutting it down during the day help?”
“Maybe for a while, but the basic problem is that the plant needs some parts replaced, and we don’t have them.”
“They must have had spares,” Michael said.
“You’d have thought so. But so far I haven’t found any.”
Elliot reached for his hat and walked to the door. “You looked everywhere?”
“All the places I’d have expected them to be.”
“Let’s go have a peek. Michael, you can lend a hand, too. Three sets of eyes are better than one.”
They made their way down the main street and crossed over the river swollen from the increasingly frequent rains. The bite of the cold was sharp in their lungs, and steam puffed from their mouths with every breath. At the door of the plant, Craig was reaching for the handle when an anguished scream from inside pierced the silence.
Craig heaved the door open and ran to where Miles, his assistant, was lying on the concrete floor in a spreading pool of steaming water, his hands on his face, every exposed area of his skin already beginning to blister with third-degree burns. A scalding stream of water gushed from one of the pipe connections, and Craig leapt toward it, twisted the shutoff valve closed, and then powered down the big turbine two stories below them.
Elliot and Michael stood stunned by the door for a moment and then rushed to Miles, their faces grim. As a physician, Elliot knew there was little he could do other than get the man to the hospital so Sarah could manage his pain and the inevitable shock that would follow burns of that magnitude. Elliot did a quick examination of Miles’s face as he quivered like a beached fish, noting the man’s eyes swelling shut. The steam had literally cooked his head, and it would be a miracle if he lived.
“Let’s get him to the hospital,” Elliot said. They lifted Miles carefully by his arms and dragged him to the door.
“Just when we could use ice, of course, it isn’t snowing yet,” Michael grumbled, and Craig frowned.
“I’ll get a horse. We can’t carry him all the way there.”
“Be quick about it,” Elliot warned. “He’s already fading.”
Craig showed up a minute later with an equipment cart pulled by a palomino stallion, and they lifted Miles gingerly onto the wooden bed. Elliot turned to the engineer, who was puffing from the sudden exertion.
“Ride as fast as you can. I’ll stay here until you can get back.” Elliot glanced up at the sky. “Warn Sarah that there won’t be any power tonight, so prepare the candles and torches.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Craig warned.
“I won’t.”
The engineer rolled away, leaving Elliot and Michael to consider their next step. The geothermal generator was a small one, an experimental take on an age-old concept: to use the earth’s naturally heated water or steam to drive a turbine, creating electricity much like a dam, except using the pressure from the steam to drive the turbine rather than rushing water. It was reliable and stable under normal circumstances, but as the system degraded with time, the lack of replacement parts had taken its toll, and it was apparent that they were facing a significant problem. When winter hit, they’d need power to survive; and at the rate they were going, there would be none available.
Elliot eyed the system of piping and pumps that carried the superheated water from the hot spring beneath his feet to the pressure tank that drove the turbine, and his expression darkened. What would have been an annoyance in the summer months could be an existential threat to their survival after the first snowfall.
Elliot paced back and forth near the entrance, mulling over their options as Michael sat quietly, his eyes on the pipes. They were both deep in thought when Craig returned, his face grim.
“Sarah says it’s bad,” he reported.
“I know,” Elliot said. “I could tell by looking at him.”
“If he survives, he’ll be blind, and he’ll look like a science experiment.”
“Poor bastard.”
“And he’ll lose some fingers. Not that it’s likely. She says she doesn’t think he’ll make it to morning.”
Elliot exhaled noisily. “I’m sorry, Craig.”
“Me too.” He gestured to the pumps. “And now we’ve got this mess to deal with. Looks like one of the seals ruptured.”
“Where have you looked for parts already? We can eliminate those areas and concentrate on the most likely.”
Craig described his search, and they each took a surrounding building. When that yielded no results, Michael asked Craig whether the technicians who’d monitored the system had an office elsewhere.
“I don’t know. But we can look.”
An hour later it was apparent they weren’t going to have any luck, and they headed back to the station and studied the generator with dour expressions. Craig rubbed a weary hand across his brow and eyed Elliot and Michael.
“I can probably cannibalize some other equipment and make this limp along, but we’re on borrowed time. We need a permanent solution, or there are going to be more failures.”
“Can the machine shop make you any of the parts you nee
d?”
“I have them working on a few, but you know how that goes. Trial and error. These are precision pieces; you get one thing even slightly off and they won’t function.” Craig surveyed the damage again and shook his head. “I’ll mop this up and see what I can cobble together, but I’m not hopeful. We’re going to need more than duct tape and chewing gum to keep this running through the winter. And you know Murphy’s Law.”
Elliot nodded. “If I didn’t, this is one hell of a reminder.” He glanced at Michael and then back to Craig. “Do what you can, and we’ll put on our thinking caps. There’s got to be a solution. We just aren’t seeing it.”
Michael snapped his fingers. “What about using the river water to drive a turbine? Wouldn’t that work?”
Craig shook his head. “The problem is you need a lot of pressure to turn one of any size – assuming you could build one designed for that. A river won’t do it. You’d need a reservoir, and then the pressure of the water backed up, released through a narrow gap, would drive it. The river’s current alone won’t do it. Sorry.”
“Windmills?” Michael tried again.
“Sure. In theory. But where are we going to get a bunch of wind turbines to generate power? Not to mention the storage problem. See, with geothermal, you have power twenty-four seven because you always have steam. With wind? You need a really windy area, and it isn’t that windy here.”
“Worst case, couldn’t we use wood to heat water, and the steam could drive the turbine?”
Craig opened a door and removed a mop. “Great solution. But the problem isn’t that we don’t have a limitless supply of hot water, Michael. So that would be perfect for a different issue.”
Elliot touched Michael’s arm, reacting to the annoyance that was creeping into Craig’s voice. “Come on. Let’s leave Craig to his work.” Elliot nodded to the engineer. “Radio me if you need anything. We’re going over to the hospital.”
“Will do.”
Chapter 19
Lucas led the group along a trail that paralleled the highway to Tulsa, periodically sweeping the landscape with his binoculars. He hadn’t seen any riders or travelers on the road, which struck him as ominous this close to a sizeable metro area – generally, if people avoided travel near a hub, it was because safety was an issue. In the post-apocalyptic world, many were nomadic by necessity, either fleeing danger or pursuing opportunity, and Tulsa was large enough that he would have expected at least a little traffic.
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 81