“Yeah, maybe. I just think they should have left some buildings intact.”
“You want any more taken off?”
“No. It looks good. Thanks. When are we heading out?”
“Not just yet. Jeff told me the steak place is open from noon to sundown. The sun’s high in the sky. Let’s get one last meal before we hit the road, and have him cook a couple of extra steaks for later. They’ll last for several days once cooked if they’re wrapped right.”
“We never resolved the money issue.”
“What money issue?”
“The money you took off of Luna. The blood money. Neither of us wanted it, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“Let’s go eat and I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 24
Jeff made a half-hearted attempt at convincing Red to stay.
If he’d known her better and known how stubborn she was he wouldn’t have bothered.
“We don’t have anywhere near enough pretty girls around here,” he said. “Heck, truth is, there aren’t a lot of girls left, pretty or otherwise. I was hoping you’d hang around a while longer so we could spend some time together.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I didn’t come to Lubbock on vacation. This was a business trip, and now my business is done. It’s time for me to move on.”
“Mind if I ask what kind of business?”
“You can ask, but I’m not going to tell you.”
“Well then. I guess it would be kind of silly for me to ask then, wouldn’t it?”
“Kind of, yes.”
Jeff turned to Jacob.
“Ready for another bottle of water?”
“Sure.”
“How about you, Red?”
“I’d like one for the road, if you don’t mind.”
“Not a problem. I’ll put three or four of them in the bag with your steaks and jerky.”
“Thank you, Jeff. Can I ask you a favor before we leave?”
“You can ask, but I may not honor it.”
“Touché.”
“Now, don’t you go speakin’ all that French on me. I’m just a simple old Texas boy. The only foreign language I ever tried to learn was Spanish. And I only learned how to cuss and count to twelve.”
“Jeff, I get the sense you’re an honest man.”
“I try to be. I was raised that way. Why?”
She pulled out the purple bag of coins and poured them on the table.
Jeff surveyed the pile of precious coins before him and let out a low whistle.
“Okay. I won’t kill anybody for that. But I’ll darn sure break the hell out of their kneecaps. Who’s my target?”
He smiled so she wouldn’t take him seriously.
Then he changed course.
“Or, if that’s to rent my body for a night, no need. You can have it for free.”
Then he saw a need to clarify and turned to Jacob.
“I mean her, not you.”
Jacob said, “Well, that’s a relief.”
Red said, “Stop it, you two. I feel like I’m conversing with a couple of four year olds.”
Jacob and Jeff looked at each other.
In almost perfect unison they said, “I’m five.”
Red muttered, “Oh, sheesh.”
She reached up and rapped Jeff three times on the forehead with her knuckles.
“Hello? Hello? Is there an adult in there and can he come out and join the conversation?”
“I’m sorry, Red. It’s just that I seldom find anybody with a sense of humor to joke around with anymore. What can I do for you?”
“How far away do you live from here?”
“I don’t know. Half a mile or so. Why?”
“I assume you walk to and from work every day?”
“Well, duh… of course. Not everybody has four legged wheels like you guys have.”
“I also assume that you see a lot of hungry people during your travels.”
“Every day. Coming and going.”
“Okay. I want you to pocket these coins. And I want you to start asking some of those people to come to the restaurant for a good meal. I want you to pick up their tabs, and keep doing that until the coins run out.”
“That’s gonna be a very long time.”
“So be it.”
“Why not just give it to Sal Bartlett? He’s the owner. He can just set it aside for when people come around begging. He can invite them in and say the meal’s on the house.”
“Let’s just say I have a severe distrust for fat men. There’s something fundamentally wrong with someone being so fat when most of the rest of us are skin and bones. It leads one to believe that maybe they’re eating way more than their share. And that they’re too greedy to share with others.”
Chapter 25
Four hours before sunset the unlikely pair set out, heading south down Slide Road.
“How long do you figure it’ll take before we get there?” Jacob asked as the horses’ hooves clopped loudly against the pavement.
“Well, let’s see. It’s about three hundred miles or so. We’ll cover probably fifteen miles a night. About three weeks. Maybe less.”
“You mean fifteen miles a day?”
“No. I mean a night. Of course, we’ll make twenty easy for the first leg because we won’t be stopping until just before dawn.”
“I don’t know if I like that idea,” Jacob told her. Aren’t we more likely to be ambushed at night?”
“No. Actually we’re much more likely to be ambushed in the daytime.”
“How do you figure?”
“I think we’re relatively safe as long as we’re in town. Of course, someone might shoot us from the cover of a nearby building, but my guess is they won’t. Horse thieves aren’t very popular. People may be jealous of us for having horses. Some may even despise us for it. But from what I’ve heard, two of the most hated kinds of people since the blackout are cattle rustlers and horse thieves.
“If we were to get ambushed during the daytime, and if somebody were to see it, they’d likely come to our defense. Or at least avenge us by gunning down the horse thieves. Maybe even hanging them, if they were taken alive.”
“Wow. It sounds like we’ve taken a giant leap backwards, back to the days of the old west.”
“In many ways we have, my friend.”
“But won’t it be harder to travel at night?”
“For most people, but not for us. In my saddlebag is a pair of night vision goggles I got from a friend.”
“You have night vision goggles that work? How in hell did he get them?”
“Dave was a prepper. Do you know what that is?”
“I’ve heard the term. Overheard it, actually, in other people’s conversations. But they generally didn’t include me in the conversations myself. I had a reputation for being rather slow.”
“Why is that? You strike me as being very intelligent.”
“I guess because I’m quiet. I’ve always been very shy. I’m the kind of guy who usually wouldn’t go to a party, and if I did I’d just hug one of the walls and not talk to anybody. A lot of people see folks like me and think we’re dimwits.”
“Their loss. They missed the opportunity to get to know a very smart guy.”
“Thank you. So, what is a prepper?”
“A prepper is someone who prepared himself for a great disaster. Hence the name. They generally didn’t know what kind of disaster was coming, and spent a lot of time arguing about it.
“A lot of them thought it was going to be a stock market crash and devaluation of the dollar. Others thought that Russia or North Korea, or one of our own worthless politicians, was going to draw us into World War Three.
“Some thought the changing weather patterns were going to cause a worldwide drought and a famine to follow. And some of them very correctly assumed that the sun was going to cause a worldwide power blackout.”
“Well, good for t
hem. But how did they prevent the goggles from being ruined?”
“I met a guy in Blanco who was such a prepper. He explained it to me, but most of it went right over my head. Something about building a big metal cage and putting certain electrical items inside of it. Then when the… whatever he called them, came from the sun and zapped the earth, they couldn’t penetrate the cage. So everything inside of it was protected.”
“Something came from the sun? Like a death ray or something?”
“No, not a death ray. He called them something. A magnetic something or other. Anyway, he said he built a huge cage inside of his garage and put replacement parts for his car and comfort items and stuff in it. And night vision goggles.
“I wish I could remember what he called those things. Magnetic something.
Red knew the words she was looking for would drive her crazy until she remembered. Her memory was once sharp as a tack. These days, though, it seemed to fail her very frequently. She supposed it was the lack of nourishment, for her diet was lacking in many essential vitamins and minerals. She’d lost weight since the blackout, as had nearly everyone she knew who had any spare pounds to lose.
The exceptions were men like John Savage and Sal Bartlett. The kind of men who had a lot more than they needed and refused to share it with others.
Jacob was stuck on the point she’d been making.
“And he just gave you the goggles, just like that? Just gave them to you?”
Red smiled.
“You’re repeating yourself repeating yourself, my friend.”
“Why would he just give you something so valuable? Was he, like, a boyfriend or something?”
“No. We barely knew each other. He was attacked in Blanco by some very bad men and I took him away from there to heal. After he was well enough to travel, we were road partners for awhile. His name was Dave Speer. He was driving his Ford Explorer up to Kansas City…”
“Driving to Kansas City? Now I know you’re pulling my leg. How was he driving when every vehicle is dead and abandoned exactly where they were on the day of the blackout?”
“As I said, he saved some parts for his car. An electronic ignition. A battery. A generator. Heck, I don’t know. Whatever he thought would be fried by the EMPs…
“Hey, I thought of it,” she said. “EMPs. Electromagnetic pulses. That’s what Dave said would come from the sun during a massive solar storm. He said it wouldn’t affect humans. Just the machines.”
“So where is this guy now? And where’s his Explorer? And why doesn’t he give us a ride to Blanco?”
“I don’t know where he’s at. He wanted to come to Lubbock to help me hunt down Luna, but I ran away from him. I told him to go find his family. That they needed him much more than I did.”
Jacob could see the pain in her eyes and her eyes welling up.
“You must worry about him an awful lot.”
“Yes. I do. I hope he was able to find his family, and I hope I see him again someday.”
Chapter 26
It was said that Will Rogers once proclaimed West Texas “as flat as a skinny girl’s chest.”
Whether he actually said it or not is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is it’s true. On a clear day one can stand on the farmland surrounding Lubbock and see for five miles in any direction.
A man with an average rifle can shoot a man off a horse at two hundred yards if he’s just an average shot.
A better shot with a better rifle can shoot the same man from four hundred yards.
And on the prairies and farmlands of West Texas, there’s nothing for that rider to hide behind.
From within the Lubbock city limits, it looks like pretty much every other town in America. Trees and buildings and landscaping of every sort.
But when Lubbock town ship was settled in 1890, it was settled on a sea of prairie grass.
Every one of the estimated five million trees in the city of Lubbock, great and small ones alike, were planted by someone, at some time, using a shovel and a desire to make the place better.
Outside of town, farmers grow a variety of crops, from cotton to sorghum to sunflowers.
But not trees. Trees in rural West Texas are as scarce as mosquitoes in December.
A cowboy atop a horse, riding alone in the old west, made a juicy target on the plains of West Texas. There simply was no cover. A bad man could see the rider coming from miles. He merely had to select a firing point, flatten himself in the dirt, and wait for the rider to draw within range.
If he happened to miss with the first shot, he’d have other chance. For the only option the cowboy had, with no place to take cover, was to lean forward and to ride hard and fast. And to pray that the shooter wasn’t very good at hitting a moving target.
Red knew all this. That was why she decided to move at night. At night, with night vision goggles, one could move very easily without being seen.
Of course, they still had to be careful. They’d ride alongside the shoulder of the highways, on the grass, where their horses’ hooves would make little noise. Pavement was brutal on the horses anyway, so riding on the grass would be much better for them.
And make it less likely one of them would come up lame.
They also had to be careful about campfires, which could be spotted from miles away. Her plan was to find a safe place to spend their days and hide their ponies while they slept. An abandoned barn, maybe, or an old gas station on the side of the highway. During the day they would build a small fire and burn it only long enough to cook their meals and boil their water. They’d prepare enough provisions to last for twenty four hours, then they’d repeat the same process. After the food and water were prepared they’d douse the fire so there was no chance of the smoke being seen from a distance.
Red was getting pretty good about watching the stars and the moon as she traveled at night. No one taught her how to tell time that way, but she was learning how to tell when she was within an hour of daylight from the shade of the sky and the positions of the stars.
When that particular time came each night – when they were within an hour of daylight, they’d start looking for an old abandoned structure, or a stand of heavy brush, to hide their horses and spend their day. Hopefully there would be a stream or water well nearby, so they could do a little fishing and replenish their water supply.
It was the way she traveled on her way to Lubbock after she’d left her friend Dave. She was on foot then, and moving stealthily was easier. But as long as they found a place to hide the ponies as each new day approached, she was confident they could make it back to Plano unmolested and in one piece.
Or two pieces, actually.
The trouble was, Red made a miscalculation. A serious miscalculation which would come back to haunt her.
Chapter 27
The trouble with traveling at night is that it’s a very slow process. Even with night vision goggles, the ground in front of a horse is very hard to see. It’s near impossible to get a horse to run, because the horse doesn’t have night vision capability. And a good horseman wouldn’t want to run a pony in the dark anyway. There are just too many unseen hazards which could cause the horse to trip and fall.
A gopher or prairie dog hole.
A discarded muffler or car bumper, thrown onto the shoulder by a highway maintenance crew.
Or a rattler sleeping peacefully at the side of the road.
Red and Jacob planned to take turns riding point, since they only had one pair of night vision goggles between them. Whoever was on point would wear the goggles to watch the ground in front of them, and walk his or her horse at a leisurely pace. The second rider would keep the lead horse in view and follow closely behind.
But things don’t always work out according to plan, and they had to make an adjustment on that first night. Red’s horse didn’t like taking the lead and walking into a dark night where he couldn’t see what was in front of him. So Jacob inherited the point position for the duration of the trip.
&
nbsp; Just before sunrise they left the highway and headed toward a distant structure. They were happy to find it was an abandoned barn. Red stole forward in the darkness to examine a nearby ranch house and found it to be abandoned.
The people who once lived there probably lit out in search of a better place to ride out the turmoil.
Or they succumbed to the plague or the random violence the blackout brought with it.
In any event, it didn’t matter. They were half a mile off the highway, at a place where they were unlikely to be challenged. Their horses had a safe place to spend the day and rest, and feed to eat.
And Red and Jacob were able to get some good rest and to recharge their bodies.
Not long before dusk, after the four of them were well fed and well rested, Jacob found a case of drinking water in the ranch house’s pantry. In the barn he found an extra saddlebag and filled up both sides with water. It wouldn’t be enough to last them until they got to Blanco. But it would allow them the chance to gather water at their leisure, or when they chanced upon it. They wouldn’t have to leave their route specifically to go looking for it.
Red had her own find, in the back of the barn.
The owners of the ranch had been horse people. Enough so that they shod their own ponies. On a workbench in the back of the barn Red found all the materials she needed to reshoe the horses. And a variety of shoes to boot.
All the shoes were fine, except for the bay’s left rear hoof. The one Red’s zany father Butch would have called “aft and to port.”
Red surmised that Luna had the good sense to visit a blacksmith on his way to Lubbock or shortly after he got there. The shoes were all new and well placed, with the exception of the one on the bay. And Red could fix that one herself.
Butch had taught Red many things when she was growing up. Her mom did too when Red was a young girl. But she died when Red was seven but Butch was as comfortable in the maternal role as he was in being a father. She never lacked for any guidance until the day a neighbor lady came in to explain to her that she’d start her monthly period soon. That led to questions about the whole human reproductive thing, which led to a talk about the birds and the bees.
A Lesson Learned: Red: Book 3 Page 8