Wasteland Marshals

by Gail Z. Martin

  Shane shrugged. “Might as well have a look. We were going south anyhow—now we’ve got a destination.” While their circuit took them through the territory on a regular basis, they often changed their route when an incident required their attention.

  They had ridden for about an hour when Lucas came to an abrupt halt and waved silently for Shane to stop as well. Two ghosts stood in the middle of the highway, spirits Lucas could see but Shane could not.

  “Ghosts?” Shane asked quietly, guessing from Lucas’s reaction.

  Lucas nodded. He’d always been able to see ghosts, but Before, the appearances had been rare, usually only in dire moments. For obvious reasons, that ability wasn’t one he publicized to his colleagues or superiors as a US Marshal, although Shane had known about Lucas’s “gift” since they were children.

  One of the spirits that blocked their way was a middle-aged man. The other was a teenage boy. Both bore the head wounds that had killed them. The ghosts stood in the middle of the highway, but Lucas felt no threat. Instead, their gestures and worried expressions conveyed a warning.

  “Those brigands Jon and Devon mentioned? I think they might be up ahead.”

  “We’re close to the state game lands,” Shane replied. “You think it’s Dan Metheney’s preppers, the guys we ran into before?”

  Lucas nodded. “Yeah. They were the first ones who came to mind.”

  When everything fell apart, the natural cooperation that fostered civilization’s rise showed itself more often than reality TV had predicted. People banded together to evacuate after floods and wildfires, forming convoys to reach safer locations, working together to rebuild. Lucas and Shane were on the front lines and had been impressed and surprised time and again when people had shown their better natures.

  But some didn’t. Groups that had been suspicious and protective before the Event grew even more defensive and insular. Those who had long predicted the end of modern civilization had almost been elated to have their warnings prove true, although no one had really foreseen the way the end happened when it came.

  Those groups focused on protecting their territory, sure that everyone meant to take what they had stored up. Lucas noticed these groups didn’t seem to mind taking what others had.

  Dan Metheney’s group had caused problems long before the Event. Metheney headed up a group of local bad boys who had rap sheets as long as their arms, on everything from arson to assault. Authorities had been busting them since their high school days, but nothing ever seemed to stick that was serious enough to send them away for long, or make them leave the area. When everything fell apart, Metheney and his followers turned cultish. More than once, Lucas and Shane had to intervene.

  Now, if they were waylaying travelers and, even worse, killing them, the Marshals had no choice but to put a stop to the problem. Lucas, in particular, had very little patience with Metheney’s preppers.

  “I thought they’d be smart enough not to cause problems again, after what happened last time.”

  “Yeah, well. Guess they’re not as smart as you thought they were.” Six months ago, Lucas and Shane had caught men from the preppers enclave who were harassing other enclaves and trying to steal from nearby towns that weren’t abandoned. The two Marshals had given the men a beat-down they should have remembered and returned them to the prepper compound with a stern warning to the leaders. A warning that obviously hadn’t been taken to heart.

  “How do you want to do this?” Shane asked.

  Lucas considered the options. He expected to be outnumbered, but he didn’t know by how many. The preppers had stockpiled everything they expected to need after a crash, which most certainly included ammunition. And unlike Lucas and Shane, who had to carefully conserve their scarce bullets while traveling hundreds of miles through dangerous territory, the preppers rarely had to defend their compound against real threats. That meant they would also likely be outgunned.

  In the old days, carjacking or highway crimes would have been the responsibility of other branches of law enforcement. Now, Shane and Lucas were often the only representatives in their territory, like the sheriffs of the Old West. And aside from the local authorities that survived in small towns and enclaves, the two Marshals were also the only remaining vestige of a larger government that had, for all practical purposes, utterly collapsed.

  “I think we need to see what we’re dealing with,” Lucas replied. “And be ready to put a stop to it—permanently.”

  They tied up their horses in a small grove just off the road where their mounts would be hidden from view. Lucas and Shane took a variety of weapons—crossbows, swords, and shotguns—since they didn’t know how many of the brigands they might be facing. Then they split up, one on each side of the road, moving stealthily through the scrub brush.

  The ghosts’ warning had stopped them just a mile from where an improvised roadblock of tree trunks and wooden crates barricaded both lanes of traffic. The brigands sat around a campfire in front of canvas tents, a camp that looked like it had been in place for a while and was intended to last for a while.

  Lucas couldn’t see Shane, but the teenage boy’s ghost gave him an idea of where his partner was in the underbrush. The older man guided Lucas, bringing him to a spot behind the camp where recently disturbed ground revealed several shallow graves.

  “Fuck,” Lucas muttered. He had debated how to deal with the robbers, but proof that they were killing travelers made the decision for him. They needed to be stopped—and the prepper compound needed to be sent a message.

  He crept closer and got his first look at the killers. They wore camouflage fatigues, although Lucas doubted any of them had ever been in the military. Four men, three of whom who looked to be barely in their twenties, and an older guy, their leader, probably in his forties. The men had buzzed haircuts, muscular builds that likely owed a nod to ‘roids, and a cockiness that immediately set Lucas’s teeth on edge.

  “Been too quiet,” one of the men said. A jug of what Lucas guessed was some kind of home brew sat beside his dented lawn chair.

  “Maybe it’s time to change locations,” another man said, reaching for the jug. “Maybe word got out.”

  “How?” The older man gave the speaker a look. “There wasn’t anyone left to tell the tale.” The others chuckled, and Lucas felt anger tighten his gut. The group of four men had eight horses, giving Lucas to suspect they had killed at least four travelers, perhaps more if any had been on foot. A haphazard pile of knapsacks, duffel bags, and other belongings beside one of the tents suggested the spoils.

  In the old days, Lucas abided by due process. Now, he had two ghosts’ bearing witness to their murders, and evidence of more crimes. In the rough justice that survived, that was enough. Shane was waiting on him, willing to follow his lead. Lucas decided it was time to end the problem.

  He fired once with the crossbow, putting a bolt through the neck of the leader. The man fell clutching at the quarrel, a look of shock on his face. Before the others could react, Lucas followed that up with a blast from his shotgun, catching the nearest man in the torso. A second later, Shane’s arrow took the third man through the chest. The last of the men looked around wildly.

  “Ken? Billy? Oh, God. Jason? Oh, my god,” the fourth man cried out, panicking. Any sympathy Lucas had for him had vanished when he’d seen the shallow graves.

  Shane’s shotgun blast hit its target, and the last of the brigands collapsed in a bloody pile atop his fellow robbers.

  Lucas waited before showing himself, in case the robbers had friends who might come in response to the attack. But after a few minutes, he decided the four men had been on their own.

  A glance at the pitiful stash next to the tent made Lucas furious. He’d already made up his mind as Shane came out of concealment and jogged to meet him.

  “Go cut saplings,” Lucas snapped as he drew his sword.

  Shane cocked his head, trying to figure out what Lucas had planned. “Lucas—”

  “I
’m going to make sure everyone knows what happens to highwaymen,” Lucas replied in a tight voice.

  “The preppers probably have AKs,” Shane said. “Think about this carefully.”

  “That’s the only reason I’m not planning to march up to their gates,” Lucas said in a tight voice. “Go.”

  Shane walked away, but he was still close enough to cringe at the sound as Lucas brought his sword down and severed the leader’s head. When he finished with the others, he left the bodies where they lay and went to break down the roadblock. Shane returned after a while with four sturdy saplings, whittled to have sharp points on either end.

  “Pretty sure there’s nothing in the rules about leaving the heads of your enemies on pikes,” Shane said as Lucas stuck the first shaft into the ground beside the tent.

  “Pretty sure the rules were written when there were more than two Marshals for three whole fuckin’ states.” Lucas couldn’t hide his anger, and he knew Shane understood the frustration of not having caught the killers earlier, not being able to be everywhere at once, to protect the people who had already lived through the collapse of their world.

  “I’ll sink the pikes. You can deal with the heads,” Shane said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. It wasn’t just the gore, Lucas knew. They had field dressed enough deer in the last three years. But they both knew this was different, that the predators they had killed had still been human, no matter how twisted. And the fact that they’d come to this was just more proof of how far the world had fallen, and them with it.

  Lucas slung the bodies over the dead men’s horses, tying them onto the saddles. Then he sent the horses galloping with a smack to the rump, shouting and waving his arms to make sure they headed back where they came from. Afterward, he and Shane cleaned up as best they could using a few cast-off shirts.

  “What about the stuff?” Shane asked with a nod toward the robbers’ loot and the raiders’ campsite.

  “Leave it. Someone will make use of it,” Lucas said, not wanting anything that belonged to either the killers or their victims. He saw enough ghosts as it was.

  “You saw something, with your Gift, didn’t you?” Lucas asked with a glance at his partner, who had gone along with their plan more readily than Lucas expected. Not that Shane wouldn’t have agreed in the end, but Lucas knew that his partner still clung to a desire for something better than the rough-and-ready frontier justice that sufficed after the end of the world as they once knew it.

  Shane nodded. “I…had a vision. I saw how they died. They begged for their lives. Offered to ride away and never tell anyone. Ken, the leader, still killed them.” His expression grew hard. “They deserved what we gave them, and more.”

  “Fuck, yeah. You should be proud of me. I really want to ride over to their compound and go Waco on their asses.”

  Shane gave a bitter chuckle. “They’ve got AKs, Lucas. AR-15s. Hell, probably grenade launchers and bazookas. If they didn’t already own an armory before things went to hell, they probably bought or stole enough weapons afterward to hold off a whole fuckin’ platoon.” He looked at the blood-soaked ground and the heads on pikes like ghoulish road signs. “I think you’ve made your point.”

  Shane didn’t see ghosts, but Lucas did. The older man and the teenage boy were joined by six more ghosts, and Lucas had a feeling they were not all of Ken’s victims, just the ones who hadn’t moved on. The man’s ghost took in the savage message of the heads on pikes, and looked saddened, but not outraged. His gaze shifted to Lucas, and then he nodded in acknowledgment. In the next breath, the ghosts faded from view.

  “I think the ghosts are at peace now,” Lucas said, knowing that Shane would have guessed why he seemed to be staring into space. “I think some of them couldn’t move on until the killing stopped, and a few of them were trying to warn people off.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Shane said as they walked back to their horses. “They’ve been through enough.” He left it unsaid that the same was true for all of them.

  4

  “What?” Lucas asked. “You’ve been distracted since we left the ghosts behind. You haven’t said a word for hours.”

  “Nothing. It’s just—” Shane started, then stopped speaking and shook his head.

  “What?”

  Shane looked away, uncomfortable. “I keep hearing songs in my head.”

  “Good thing, because the radio doesn’t work anymore.”

  Shane gave him the stink eye. “Not funny. It’s different. The song isn’t a regular song. Not like something I heard and remembered. More like birds or whales or…” He let his voice drift off. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Lucas frowned. “You think it has something to do with your visions?”

  “Don’t know. It changes. Sometimes it’s soothing. Other times, I could swear it’s agitated, like it’s trying to warn me.” He finally turned to Lucas. “Right before we split up to track the preppers, it got very… jittery. Discordant.”

  “I didn’t used to be able to see ghosts as much. Maybe you’re growing into a new part of your abilities,” Lucas replied. He could see that Shane felt uncomfortable admitting the oddity. “Hell, you’ve seen what the world is like now. Ghosts. Monsters. Shifters. Vamps. So is it possible your psychic hotline is picking up on a new frequency? Why not?”

  Shane managed a slight smile that looked both grateful and self-conscious. “Thanks. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I don’t think ignoring it is an option.”

  “Have you found a pattern?” Lucas asked.

  “I notice it more when we’re around park land and less when we’re in towns or cities. But that might just be because there’s less to distract me.”

  They headed south, stopping when Lucas spotted a small pond where they could clean up and wash the blood away. The farther they went, the darker the sky became as heavy gray clouds began to roll in.

  “Looks like we’ve got something coming in from the northwest,” Lucas noted, pointing to where the clouds were darkest.

  “Think we can make it to Cooper’s Lake? I don’t really want to get soaked and sleep rough.”

  Lucas eyed the storm clouds. “Maybe. It’s been moving in quickly. Pick up the pace, we might make it.”

  The horses didn’t seem to mind, and Lucas wondered if they, too, could sense the coming rain. The temperature had dropped since they set out that morning, and the wind started to blow. Shane had grown quiet, and Lucas saw him put fingers to his temple.

  “Headache?”

  Shane nodded. “Yeah. But…it’s the song again. It went away for a while, after the preppers. But the farther south we go, the louder it gets. And…it’s different. I don’t know whether that means it’s coming from somewhere else or it has a new meaning. Or…maybe I’m just imagining the whole thing.”

  Lucas doubted that, given how uncomfortable Shane looked. They’d known each other all their lives, and Lucas had never seen Shane exaggerate or make up symptoms, not even to get out of the worst duties. Shane had always had a bit of the Sight about him, even before the Events brought his gift to the fore. Lucas had always trusted his own intuition, and with all the changes the Events had wrought, he’d come to accept that the world had become a different place and that the rules were permanently different.

  Two miles out from Cooper’s Lake, Lucas knew they were in trouble. The wind had grown strong enough to lash their clothing, and the cold rain felt like needles. Their horses moved faster on their own accord. Lucas had glimpsed several ghosts along the road, and those that appeared to be more than faded remnants gestured in warning for the travelers to find shelter.

  “The song is practically screaming in my head,” Shane yelled above the rain. “We’ve got to get off the road. It’s going to be bad.”

  Just then, the wail of an air raid siren cut through the howl of the wind. Lucas knew that some communities had dug their antique manual sirens out of basements and museums when the grid went down. The sound sent a chill down his spine
.

  “Ride for it!” he shouted, digging his heels into Shadow’s ribs. The stallion needed no further urging, and lunged forward, with Shane and Red close behind.

  They reached the gates of the Cooper’s Lake stockade, drenched and shivering as the wind howled and the siren caterwauled. The sky overhead had turned a greenish black, and gusts were strong enough to rock them in their saddles.

  “US Marshals, asking for sanctuary,” Lucas said, fighting his chattering teeth, as he fished out his badge for the sentry. The man looked equally miserable in his leather cape and broad-brimmed hat.

  “I need permission from the king—”

  “Tell King Kevin that Lucas and Shane are here. Hurry, before we die.”

  Moments later, the stockade’s gate opened to let them in, and they rode into the Kingdom of Butler Highlands.

  For decades, the Organization of Historic Interpreters, a large group of medieval re-enactors, had camped each summer at Cooper’s Lake. They took great pride in preserving old ways of cooking, making clothing, spinning cloth, forging steel—pretty much all the day-to-day tasks of a medieval household. The more adventurous donned homemade armor and fought mock battles. That knowledge and the skills they honed came in handy when the modern world suddenly stopped working.

  The flags of the kingdom flapped wildly, nearly tearing from their posts. Since the Events, the kingdom had expanded, taking up the entire five-hundred-acre campground. A wooden stockade fence ran the perimeter of the grounds. Permanent homes made of stone, daub, and wattle, scavenged bricks, and wood replaced the tents popular when the gathering was just for fun. Some of the dwellings had even been dug into the hillsides. Like the Amish, the residents of the kingdom chose to live with the limited technology of a long-ago era, accepting a lack of electricity and internet and going on about their lives.

  The captain of the guards came running toward them. “Marshals. Welcome. His Majesty will want to see you. I’ll take you there myself.” He glanced at their mounts. “And of course, we’ll provide food and water for your horses. Leave them with my men, and they’ll be cared for.”