Someone in the back asked, “Who will watch our horses while we’re camping out here?”
“I’ve contracted with two men who will take them across the street and watch them overnight. They’ll be grazing on the courthouse lawn.
“I know this doesn’t seem like the exciting duty you guys signed up for. But look at the other side of the coin. These kids are volunteering to do backbreaking work to help people they don’t even know. The least we can do is make sure they get it done safely by keeping the bad guys away from them.
“Any other questions?”
He looked around. There seemed nothing else to say.
“Good. Maloney volunteered for extra shifts by falling asleep at my muster. Wagner volunteered for being a dumbass. They’ll each pull a week to start. Everybody else will rotate by days. I’ll make up a schedule before you all leave today and you can jot down the days you’re working. If your shift falls on a muster day you’ll be excused. Anything critically important will be passed to you by radio.”
He looked directly at Randy, then at Wagner.
“Any concerns or objections?”
Chapter 46
Wagner looked at his feet and mumbled something only he could hear.
Randy thought about mentioning the lead on Tom’s murder case, and asking permission to be excused from the detail while he pursued it.
But he still wasn’t sure he wanted Shultz to know about the lead. Then he’d certainly assign additional officers to the case.
And Randy stubbornly believed he owned it.
Besides, protecting volunteer college students was just as important, in his view, as knocking on doors and checking on his neighbors.
Tom’s killer didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere. He’d still be out there… somewhere… when Randy’s week on escort duty was up.
Randy left muster and headed back to the intersection of 88th Street and Raleigh Avenue, where he examined the ultra-light fishing line he’d strung the day before.
It was virtually invisible against the backdrop of the gray pavement, ten inches off the ground and strung between the bumpers of cars parked on opposite sides of the street.
He’d hung the line on 88th Street, a bit east and west of Raleigh, and on Raleigh just south of the intersection.
Since he presumed the killer was continuing south, he placed another stretch of line five blocks farther south in a similar fashion.
Randy believed that Tom’s horse would snap the line and never even realize it. The rider on his back wouldn’t notice it either. But it would give Randy a valuable clue on where to extend his search.
If he returned and found the first line across Raleigh and the line west of Raleigh to be intact, for example, he’d head east on 88th in the direction of the only broken line.
If the first line on Raleigh was broken but the second one wasn’t, he’d have a five street target in which to conduct his house-by house search.
If both lines on Raleigh were broken, he’d extend the search out a bit farther, setting up new lines farther south on Raleigh.
Of course, it was possible a human would break the line as he walked down the street.
But he doubted it. Every human he’d seen out and about in the residential neighborhoods traversed through the yards. In the street they were sitting ducks for a sniper who might shoot them dead and take whatever they were carrying.
In the yards they could much more easily dive into bushes or behind a tree. Or duck into an abandoned house.
It was the way homeowners chose to travel when they left their homes to go to their closest grocery store for their two-day supplies of food for their families.
It was also the way the occasional looter or seeker of opportunities used when he walked from house to house looking for broken windows or the smell of decaying bodies. For those were the two primary indicators that the houses were vacant and might contain valuables.
By now, about two months after the blackout, opportunists had begun to realize that their short-term future might depend on the meager rations they were allowed.
But their long-term future was in precious metals and gems.
The dollar was now worthless. In all likelihood, even if it were to be reproduced one day, it would never again be the “almighty” currency it once was.
The way of the future was precious metals and jewels, which one day soon would be used to exchange for food, guns and ammunition.
And perhaps even the niceties of life: liquor, drugs, companionship.
Those who fancied themselves as progressive thinkers were already gathering such materials. The jewelry stores and coin shops had already been cleaned out.
And that left the private residences. The cookie jars. The space between the mattresses. The underwear and lingerie drawers. And all the other places people hid their gold and silver necklaces and old Aunt Edna’s diamond rings.
Looters were out and about all over Lubbock gathering such things up.
And in a strange sense of irony, the looters had themselves become targets of opportunity.
Because for every twenty looters there was a bandit watching out for them and lying in wait.
Waiting for the looters to fatten their backpacks with valuables, then taking them out with a gunshot and grabbing the backpacks for themselves.
Lubbock, Texas, like every other city in the world, was becoming a battlefield. Liberal gun laws had for decades made guns available for anyone who wanted them. These days almost everyone had at least one, and any reluctance to use them on another human being had gone by the wayside.
There were several insurmountable truths in the new world. One was that survivors had to get out of their houses occasionally to avoid starving to death.
Another was that they’d best be armed, and be ready to use those arms, or there was a very good possibility they’d be left dead in the streets, stripped bare of everything of value.
A third was that when they got out and about, they had to stay close to the houses. And they had to be aware of their surroundings at all times. Where the nearest porch was. The nearest wall they could hide behind. The nearest car in the nearest driveway.
And lastly: nobody, unless they had a death wish… walked down the middle of the street anymore.
As he’d suspected, Randy found the fishing line on the south side of the intersection broken.
The line five blocks up on the same avenue was still intact.
His prey was holed up somewhere on the five streets in between.
He knew the killer had left the area on Tom’s horse, heading back toward Riley’s Hardware store and other stores in the nearby business district.
He didn’t know whether he’d returned to his hideout and merely stepped over the already broken line.
But it didn’t matter. His search area had been reduced considerably.
He was one huge step closer to finding his killer.
Chapter 47
Steve Peters had been, for as long as he could remember, the exception to every rule.
He was born of humble beginnings, to a mother who didn’t give a damn about him and a father who was gone most of the time. For days on end his father would go on benders, only returning when he ran out of money. He’d spend a day or two beating Steve and his mother, then be off again when his next pension check came in.
Boys from such homes weren’t supposed to succeed. Yet Steve made it out of the home and never looked back, making a comfortable living as a carpenter. He considered that in itself evidence that he was somewhat exceptional.
He never saw much need in education and hated school. He dropped out after his ninth grade year. Yet he considered himself smarter than anyone else he knew.
Another indicator of greatness. At least in his own mind.
While almost no others in Lubbock saw the EMPs coming, Steve did. And not only did he foresee them, he prepared himself for the turmoil that would follow. That, in his eyes, was his greatest accomplishment. A
nd proof beyond doubt that he was gifted in every way.
Perhaps Steve was onto something with his claims to exceptionalism.
For he was quite possibly the only man in Lubbock who was an exception to another rule:
The rule that to survive, one had to get out of their sanctuaries and gather provisions.
Steve had built himself a fortress. It wasn’t quite impenetrable, but it didn’t have to be. For all appearances, it held absolutely nothing of value. It appeared to be nothing but a vacant house, void of all furnishings, valuables and occupants.
And nobody ever assaulted a vacant house.
Within the bowels of the house, though, were a myriad of secrets.
Inside a hidden basement was Steve’s sanctuary. It was well stocked and high tech, and allowed Steve all the creature comforts no longer enjoyed by the rest of the city populous. He could relax on a recliner, eating microwave popcorn and watching a movie, or jam to rock and roll on a state of the art stereo system while reading or playing video games.
Yes, it was lonely. But he was safe and secure in his new world.
In the spring, he had stores of seeds to plant. He even had a quarter-acre plot to plant them on, directly behind his own house, in an unused lot surrounded by an eight-foot privacy fence.
And to satisfy his hunger for meat, he had his rabbits.
Most people turned up their noses at the prospect of eating rabbit meat. But Steve rather liked it. And over the years he’d developed an impressive collection of rabbit recipes. He could cook it a hundred different ways, and seemingly would never grow tired of it.
The only meat Steve liked as much as rabbit was chicken. But chickens weren’t the cute little creatures they appeared to be in the storybooks and on cartoons. They were filthy and disgusting, and a chicken coop stunk up the neighborhood. He remembered that from his childhood, since his own mother maintained a coop in their back yard.
Besides, chickens were too noisy to keep in a suburban setting. Their clucking and the roosters’ crowing would attract the curious to his “vacant” house like a magnet.
Rabbits, on the other hand, just hopped around the back yard, eating and pooping and not saying much at all.
The only other thing they did, really, was screwing. And that was okay by Steve, for it guaranteed his rabbit population would grow at least as fast as Steve could eat them.
So yes, Steve was the exception to every rule. Even the one which said he had to get out of his house to survive.
That wasn’t true at all.
He was only out now to rectify a problem of his own making. Through his own carelessness he’d let slip that he had a working ham radio. A radio that would continue to work even in the wake of an electromagnetic pulse attack.
So now Major John Shultz, a Texas Ranger and commander of Company C, had to die.
Steve had spent two days and nights in an abandoned house within sight of Shultz’s own home.
He was scoping out his victim. Literally, with a set of Bushnell binoculars.
He’d been hoping Shultz left at the same time each morning, and left alone.
If that had been the case, Steve merely had to find a good sniper’s nest atop a nearby house, wait for the major to come riding by, then dispatch a single shot into the major’s head. Then he could have run home and been back in his basement before anyone really knew what happened.
But that wasn’t the case. The major wasn’t going to make it that easy on him.
Ranger Dan Moore and Ranger Jonah Stowe lived two blocks from one another.
That was mere coincidence.
The fact that they rode together to Major Shultz’s house each morning was no coincidence at all.
Although they lived a full two miles from the major’s house, it was on their way to their assigned districts.
And they enjoyed the major’s company. He wasn’t only their boss, he was a good friend.
The three had a lot in common, including a love of baseball and a knack for telling a good yarn.
Fact was, even if the good major hadn’t lived on the direct path to their districts, they’d have gone out of their way to ride with him anyway.
Every fifth day Moore and Stowe took the same day off. On those days Major Shultz rode to and from work alone.
But Steve had no way of knowing that. If he’d watched two days before, he’d have had his shot.
Timing, as they say, is everything.
Plan A was out. He’d have to formulate a Plan B.
But he would. After all, he was far more intelligent than his prey.
Chapter 48
Randy wasn’t happy to be taking time away from his search for Tom’s killer, which he now considered his primary mission.
But he tended to look at the bright side in most cases.
Randy believed there were two types of people in the world.
One type believed there was a silver lining around every dark cloud.
The other believed there was a dark cloud filling every silver lining.
He was more the optimistic type.
He was convinced the killer wouldn’t try to get away. He’d shown no sense of urgency in moving on after the murder. That meant he had no clue he was being hunted.
He’d still be around when Randy finished his detail.
Randy was sure of that.
On the bright side, the likelihood of having to wrap any more putrid bodies in sheets and drag them out to the roadway were practically nil for the next five days.
And Randy’s own personal experience with Texas Tech coeds were that they were among the prettiest girls in Texas. And despite the blackout and all the inconveniences it wrought, they still found a way to smell just as pretty.
Most of the Rangers he worked with smelled no better than the horses they rode.
Most of the citizens he encountered were little better.
But Randy wasn’t so jaded, so depressed, that he wouldn’t enjoy the company of college kids for the next few days.
In that respect, he was actually looking forward to it.
Randy knew that the four wagons and their crews would be lined up adjacent to the campus fountain at seven a.m.
His plan was to get there at six thirty so he could chat with each of the crews.
That way he could pair up with the one which was most friendly.
Most pretty.
The one which smelled the best.
He put fifteen bottles of water in one saddle bag and his lunch in the other. Two cans of Wolf brand chili, with no beans. And a plastic spoon to eat it with.
It wouldn’t be the healthiest lunch he’d ever have, but it would fill his gut. It would also provide his body with protein, and he was burning through a lot of it these days.
As for the water, he’d likely drink no more than four bottles himself.
But he’d found by passing out water to thirsty people on the streets, he was fostering good will between the Rangers and the citizens of Lubbock.
And those citizens might be more apt to provide information to those Rangers in the future. Or to help them haul bodies. Or report suspicious activity.
And if they never did any of that, it was still okay by Randy.
For he didn’t give away the water expecting something in return, necessarily.
He passed it out because he was a big believer in the golden rule.
And if he were out there, thirsty and with no water, he’d hope someone would offer him a bottle.
It was dark on this particular morning. There were storm clouds rolling in which blocked the morning sun.
He took his two umbrellas and placed them in the saddle bag with his chili.
Better safe than sorry was another thing he lived by.
Halfway to the Tech campus he heard distant thunder.
Trigger paused briefly and huffed loudly. Just to remind Randy that he didn’t much like thunder, and lightning even less so.
“I know, boy. I’m not crazy about it myself. Let�
��s just hope it passes us by.”
At just before six thirty, Randy and Trigger turned off University Avenue at the school’s main entrance and rode to the fountain just inside the campus.
Four covered wagons, each with teams of two horses, were lined up in a neat row, their brakes set to keep the horses in place. The horses seemed a bit restless and sensed the oncoming weather. But they didn’t appear ready to bolt.
The crews were gathered in front of the fountain, joking around and chatting while they awaited their escorts’ arrival.
A pretty brunette Randy thought he recognized from the message boards greeted him as he stepped from his horse.
“I’m guessing you’re a Texas Ranger,” the girl said.
Randy smiled and countered, “I’m guessing you’re not.”
“No, sir. I’m Brandy. Brandy Montgomery. I’m the driver of team two.”
A slight breeze came through and lifted the girl’s perfume toward Randy’s nostrils. She smelled of lilac and cinnamon.
It was a strange combination, but it worked.
He tipped his hat and said, “I’m Randy Maloney, and I am indeed a Texas Ranger.”
She shook his hand and said, “Well, I am indeed not one. So we’re both right. I supposed that’s as good a way to start a rainy day as any.”
Randy nodded toward the horses and asked, “Are they going to be okay if it’s stormy?”
“That’s what we were discussing, the other teams and I. We think the rain won’t bother them much, as long as there’s not a lot of lightning. Of course, if it starts to rain, we’ll try to find them some shelter.”
A second pretty girl, this one a redhead, walked away from the crowd to join them. Then a third.
Brandy introduced them.
“This is Shannon and Rebecca. They’re on my team too.”
The three shook hands and Shannon asked Randy, “So, which team are you riding with?”
Randy looked over at the remaining team members at the fountain. They were mostly guys.
For him, it was a no brainer.
“Well, with y’all, of course.”
A Whole New World: Ranger: Book 2 Page 14