The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set

by L. R. Burkard

  Tex stared hard after Kole, who had disappeared into the tree line. And then we heard a shot.

  “Oh, no!” Angel's voice broke with emotion. “Someone’s shot Kole! I just know it!”

  “Everyone to the house,” Tex ordered, “Until we know what’s coming!” He dropped the bucket to pull his rifle, which he often wore slung across his back, into both hands. He cocked the barrel, giving me goosebumps on my arms.

  Dragging an unwilling Kane by the collar, I said, “Maybe it’s just somebody hunting.” I hoped this was the case. “Someone who got frightened by Kole.”

  “Hunting on our land!” Angel said, her face hard with grief and anger. She doubled her grip on Kool's collar. He was the smallest of the three dogs, a muscular Husky.

  “We’ll see,” said Tex. “We don’t know for sure yet that Kole’s been shot. We don’t know anything but let’s not take chances.”

  As we hurried towards the house, I remembered the bucket—we’d left it there, half-filled with the morning’s water. But I was spooked by that shot and no way was I going back for the bucket. Before coming to live with Tex and Angel, Richard and I had encountered ruthless marauders and worse, foreign guerrillas—I didn’t want to come face to face with either.

  “Sarah, you have GOT to learn to handle a firearm!” Angel scolded, as we neared the house. I felt a stab of conviction—she was right, of course. Life wasn’t about doing what felt comfortable, it was about staying alive. Surviving. And learning to shoot might be the most important survival skill of all if we got overrun by a gang. Or by a truck-load of those foreign soldiers.

  Watching my brother ahead of me, I realized we were lucky to have Richard back—just in time—if this was going to be a battle! At least, I thought it was lucky. Until we got in the house and Tex turned suspicious eyes to my brother.

  “Did you come alone?”

  Richard scowled. “Of course.” Tex stared at him a moment as if trying to read his thoughts.

  Angel was at the side of the window, carefully poking aside the curtain with the barrel of her rifle. “I just want to see Kole come out of those woods,” she said, and bit her lip. Kane and Kool hadn’t ceased their barking, and ran to the windows eagerly the moment we released them in the house. Both dogs had their paws on the sill. They stopped barking only to emit mean, snarling growls, while their eyes searched the outdoor scene.

  If we’d let them, they’d run out there like Kole. They were real guard dogs. But we always brought them in if we feared intruders were about lest they’d get killed or taken for food. I tried to silence thoughts that this may have been Kole’s fate. We needed our pets. In my heart, I knew it was more than just needing them. We loved them.

  Suddenly Angel gasped. “It’s a group! They’re coming! And I don’t see Kole! I’m sure they shot him!”

  Tex joined her at the window, his eyes narrowed. I hurried over too. We looked out past the field to the woods where Kole had disappeared. Sure enough, in the distance a group of people had emerged from the tree-line into the field. They were coming from the same direction Richard had come from. Tex turned accusing eyes to my brother.

  “We’ve got company,” he said, heavily. “And something tells me you’ve been expecting them.”

  Heart thumping, I realized Tex thought my brother had brought this gang! I started counting them. With the fog almost gone, it looked like maybe fifteen people. They carried things—weapons!—and were definitely coming towards our cabin.

  Richard came up next to me and looked out. Turning to Tex, he cried, “I didn’t know they were coming! I don’t know who they are! I didn’t bring them here!”

  Tex eyed him grimly. “You’re a traitor, Richard.”

  For a moment I thought Tex would send my brother out there, banish him. I mean, what else could he do, right? But his next words not only ruined that hope but sent a wave of horror down my spine.

  “You’re a traitor. And traitors deserve death.”

  Chapter 2

  SARAH

  I wanted to scream at Tex. Are you crazy? Richard is not the enemy! But no words would move from my throat.

  “I’m not a traitor!” Richard growled.

  “He would never do that!” I added, choking out the words. Bile rose in my throat.

  The dogs ran from the window to the door and jumped against it, barking savagely. I tried to hush them but it was no use. I felt heart-stricken by Kole’s disappearance but having Tex suspect my brother of treachery was worse.

  Tex studied the approaching gang with a grim look. He turned to Angel. “We need to lock up. This ain’t a social call.” Glancing toward my brother, he told her, “Stay with Richard while I shut things down.” To me, he said, “C’mon, Sarah! Secure that back door! Get it bolted! We’ve got no time to spare.” Richard looked poised, ready to help, but Tex told him, “You just stay put with Angel here. While I decide what to do with you.”

  “I could be helping!” he cried. Biting her lip, Angel watched my brother but her face and eyes were sympathetic. It was just how I felt. I shot him a look that I hoped told him so as I passed. Richard’s face glowered angrily. He was slumped in the chair as if he’d given up trying to reason with Tex. But as I hurried towards the back I heard him say, “You’re just gonna sit here and wait for them to reach us?”

  Then, Angel's voice: “We can lock this place up really good. What would you have us do?”

  “Fight!” my brother said. “Start on ‘em, now, before they get here! Let them know we’re not just sitting here waiting to go down!”

  I heard Tex closing shutters in the master bedroom as I reached the door. They weren’t shutters at all really, but special steel sheets which could be manually lowered by a crank to cover the window completely in a steel shell.

  The cranks were folded inside small recesses in the walls so I hadn’t noticed them right away when Richard and I first got to the cabin. But like other preparations Tex and Angel had in place, the window coverings were sheer genius.

  In fact I now knew about all the defenses they’d built into the cabin; things that made it extra secure against threats like this approaching band. Things that weren’t visible to the eye at first but which I’d discovered over time or been shown by Angel. So instead of the normal log cabin I thought it was (albeit one with a great deal of nifty survival gear) now I knew there was nothing normal about it. It was a specially crafted survival home—and we were about to find out if the extra defenses were going to keep us alive!

  I found the back door locked as it was supposed to be. We kept it that way so we didn’t have to worry about anyone entering without an invitation. So all I had to do was slide the bars across it and lock them into place to secure it further. From the outside it looked like a regular wooden door but it was reinforced with rebar in the wood, extra-large steel screws in the frame, and with seven steel bars across it, there was no way it would be breached.

  The cabin had other built-in defenses, too. The logs of the walls were also reinforced with steel bars and metal wiring. As I said, brilliant. But I’d never seen the cabin in full lock-down before and with each steel shade that Tex lowered, the interior grew darker. It felt like getting sealed up in a tin of sardines. Yet, despite a mild sense of claustrophobia, I felt reassured—especially when Angel lit a battery-powered lamp so we could see better.

  I was struggling to lower the shade over the storage room window when Tex joined me and finished the job. I started to apologize for needing his help but he said, with a wink, “The crank is meant to work without electricity—not without muscle.”

  As we returned to the main living area, Richard asked, “If you close up every window, how are you gonna know what they’re doing out there?”

  Tex, ignoring him, proceeded to lower the last metal shade over the window that faced the on-comers but stopped when it was halfway down. Daylight—our last connection to the outside world—filtered through. He turned to my brother. “If they want to talk, I’m listening.
If they shoot, I’ll lower that shade and we’ll be like snug bugs in a rug.”

  “But blind as bats!” Richard said.

  Angel and I stood by tensely.

  “Are you worried about your friends out there?” Tex asked.

  Richard, sighing, shook his head. “I don’t know those people! I don’t know anybody out there!

  Tex, standing to one side of the window, peered out carefully. “Maybe we should send you out there and find out.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  Tex eyed me with regret. “I’m sorry, Sarah, but you know yourself these people came on his heels.” He stared outside for a moment. “Looks like about twenty of them.” To Angel, he added, “This may be too many for us, even with our precautions in place. Get ready for Plan B. But first—” He looked at Richard. “You betrayed us.”

  Angel, wide-eyed, scurried to the kitchen. “Plan B—already?” she asked, as if not wanting to believe it. She grabbed an insulated cooler that we used when gathering garden produce, and shoved it at me. “Empty whatever you can from the ice box into this, quickly.”

  Richard, frowning, said, “If you were smart, you’d be taking shots at them by now! Why are you letting them get close?” But Angel and Tex ignored him.

  Angel asked, “You really think we need Plan B? They can’t get in, hon! That was the idea to begin with, wasn’t it? Being able to stay up here as long as possible, even through an attack?” Her face twisted as she pleaded.

  My eyes met Richard’s. I knew he was wondering about this mysterious “Plan B.” Neither of us had been trusted with that information but I was highly curious. I began doing as Angel said, filling the insulated tote, but I found myself moving slowly. It didn’t make sense to me to stop and pack a bag; it felt useless. Sure, food was precious, but how could we carry it? And where did Angel think we could run to? It seemed stupidly time-consuming if what we needed to do was run. Tex, meanwhile, was looking back and forth from the oncoming mob to my brother, his eyes creased with concern.

  “I didn’t betray you, I swear! I’m telling you to start picking them off! Would I do that if I was their friend?” Richard cried.

  Tex answered slowly. “I don’t know what you do to your friends, Richard. That’s the problem right now, isn’t it?”

  “THEY are the problem!” Richard said, nodding his head towards the outdoors. “You need to start shooting! Now, before they get close!”

  I took a quick peek to see how far they were, and saw—no one! “They’re gone!” I cried, in relief.

  “They’re not gone, they’ve dropped down. They’re crouching and crawling towards us,” Angel said, sardonically. She’d been periodically watching their progress while stuffing kitchen supplies in a huge duffel bag. At the window, the dogs whimpered because the gang had gone out of sight. They ran to the door, sniffing intently along the bottom and side, desperate to keep the scent. Low, guttural growls came from their throats. Tex set his rifle down, letting it rest against his leg, and pulled out a smaller gun from a waist holster. I watched in mute horror as he pointed it at Richard!

  “I didn’t betray you!” Richard growled.

  “I think you did, Richard. But that’s not why I’m doing this. I’d settle for banishing you for treachery—but I don’t dare open the door now. And I can’t let you see what we do next. Our backup plan has got to stay secret—from that crowd.” He nodded back towards the approaching gang.

  “I didn’t bring them!” Richard cried. “I came back alone! I even checked to make sure no one was on me!”

  “How do you explain that?” Tex asked angrily, jerking his head towards the intruders. “They came right on your tail.”

  “I didn’t bring them!” he insisted. “I was running FROM them!”

  Tex sighed heavily. “You ran them right to us.”

  Richard looked bewildered. His face fell. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, quietly.

  My heart went out for my brother. He’d tried to be careful, but unwittingly had led them to our homestead! Surely Tex would understand he hadn’t meant to!

  “Fine. Go on; do it,” Richard said, grimly, eying Tex’s handgun. I gasped. My heart flew to my throat.

  “I didn’t mean to bring them,” he continued. “But I guess I did.”

  “No!” I shouted. “He didn’t bring them! It was just”—I groped for words. “Bad luck!”

  “I don’t believe in luck, good or bad,” Tex said. He was staring at my brother, never taking his eyes from his face.

  “You may as well let him shoot me,” Richard said to me. “We’re dead anyway, by the looks of it. Because we should be picking them off right now but we’re all sitting here like zombies doing nothing.”

  “No!” I cried again, looking from my brother to Tex, while all the agony I felt sent hot blood to my face. My heart pounded in my ears and suddenly I was the old Sarah, the one who fainted when things got horrible. I sat quickly and put my head down, taking deep breaths. How could Tex be willing to shoot my brother? I knew it wasn’t something he wanted to do, but if push came to shove, Tex did what needed doing. I prayed he would realize this was not one of those things.

  Angel touched my arm gently. She said to Tex, in a coaxing tone, “C’mon, hon, leave him be. Richard didn’t mean to lead anyone here.” My brother looked into her face and I saw something in his eyes waver, as though a sliver of hardness fell away. Sudden hope filled my heart—Angel believed Richard!

  I raised my head and stared imploringly at Tex. “He would never lead a mob to you—or to me,” I said. Hardly realizing it, I was clenching my fists.

  Tex stared at Richard—I found out later he was praying silently, asking God to tell him what to do!

  Suddenly from outside the eerie sounds of hoots and hollers and whoops descended on us. They were bone-chilling sounds, battle cries! We were like pioneers facing savage Indians on the warpath. I was grateful for the extra defenses of the cabin, but it spooked me that Tex didn’t seem to put much stock in them. He was ready to move to his mysterious Plan B.

  “Sarah, you’re wasting time!”Angel scolded, turning on me. “You should have emptied that ice box by now!”

  “I need to know he’s not going to shoot my brother!”

  “Instead of worrying about me, you could have been taking down that crowd,” Richard, said, nodding towards the howling intruders. “We could have wiped them out by now!”

  And then, while Angel and I looked imploringly at Tex, he nodded at Richard, while returning his pistol to its holster. “Okay,” he said. He turned his gaze to Angel as if his next words were for her benefit. “We’ll take your word for it, Richard.”

  His slow, heavy voice never sounded sweeter! I had an urge to run over and hug him. Instead, I took a shuddering breath deep with relief, and went back to stuffing supplies into the insulated tote bag. Richard sprang into action. He fell to his knees and pulled out one of the AR-15s Tex and Angel kept beneath the furniture, and then, scrambling to his feet, rushed toward the window.

  “What’re you doing?” Tex asked him, his face creased in concern.

  Richard gritted his teeth. “Defending this place!” !” And in the next second, he’d sent a shot out, and then two more. My ears ached. With a pounding heart I kept grabbing supplies. I filled the insulated tote and then a box, filling it with blankets, an axe, oil lamps, anything anything that I deemed useful, though I had no clue how we’d actually manage to bring it all if we did end up following a back-up plan.

  Angel dropped to her knees in front of the bookshelf and pulled out another AR. “I’ll get all the guns.” She pulled a few more rifles from hiding places, as I half-watched and half-worked, hardly knowing what-all I threw into the tote.

  The dogs threw themselves at the door, barking viciously. And then a burst of gunfire blasted through the half-opened window, sending shards splintering into the room. Tex rushed over to the right of the window as the barrage continued. Angel and I fell to the floor. As I lay there helpl
essly covering my ears with my hands, I knew what it meant to have your heart in your throat. I literally could not swallow.

  Richard fired until he’d emptied the magazine of his rifle. Looking around, he threw it aside and grabbed one that Angel had dragged out, checked that it was loaded, and sent more shots out the window. He’d become well versed in using guns—unlike me—since he had practiced often.

  I was unable to do anything now except lay there in frozen terror and misery, my head exploding from the noise. My few shooting lessons had been with a small caliber pistol—outdoors. Here inside, the AR was deafening, going through my whole being.

  Angel nudged me and put something in my hands. “Put them on,” she said. “It’ll help.” I looked down and saw two small orange foamy things. Earplugs! I stuffed them into my ears.

  Tex had been trying, between dodging bullets and returning fire, to lower the metal shade. Outside, the awful cries and whoops continued, seeming to circle the house now, though I couldn’t be sure. My throat tightened again. It seemed certain that we’d never be able to escape the cabin and go to any backup plan! They had us surrounded! Why hadn’t Tex and Angel realized this would happen? How had they expected to escape?

  Richard said, “If you close that up, we can’t fight back.”

  “I don’t want to fight back if I don’t have to,” said Tex. “I just want to keep us safe.” But even as he spoke more gunfire sounded, hitting the walls of the cabin and the door.

  “Tex!” screamed Angel. “Move away from there!” He moved aside slightly, still determined to lower the metal. I saw a splotch of red appear on his side. He’d been shot!

  As he struggled with the crank, we realized the sheet was not going down.

  “Look, it’s damaged!” Richard cried, pointing with the barrel of his rifle to a bubble in the metal right near the side groove. It was a warp caused by a single bullet but it was enough to prevent the sheet from going down. Meanwhile, their shooting continued. A picture on the wall behind me lurched and fell with a crash.