“If this country is to have any chance at a future,” he said, looking down at Bowie, “we’re going to have to see this through. We can’t allow anyone who was involved in what happened at Glynco to remain in power. No one is above the law. No one.”
Bowie devoured the jerky and looked up expectantly for a second piece. Mason tossed him another chunk of the dried meat.
“If Pike’s involved, we’ll need President Glass on our side.” He hesitated. “Assuming, of course, that she isn’t tangled up in this mess too.”
It occurred to him that reaching out to President Glass might be harder than it sounded. He had no idea where she was located. Was she still in Washington, DC? He doubted it. The city would be a mess with mountains of dead bodies, not to mention hordes of infected survivors. Even if he could find her, there was the issue of how to make contact in a way that wouldn’t end up getting him killed. If Vice President Pike was involved, he could probably find a way to intercept Mason before he made his way up through the chain of command.
“I tell you what,” he said, giving Bowie the last piece of jerky. “Let’s get back to the cabin and see if we can use the radio to find out more about General Hood. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to get a bead on President Glass.”
He swung open the driver’s side door of his truck, and Bowie hopped in, pacing from one side to the other, obviously excited to be getting back on the road. Mason climbed in beside him and started it up. It was nearly four hundred miles back to Boone, and making it before nightfall would be difficult.
“Believe me,” he said, “I’m ready to leave this place too. But we still have one more thing to do.”
He eased the truck up the on-ramp, following the path the infected mob had taken during the night. When he got to the top, he carefully inched past the Greyhound bus and parked in the middle of the convoy.
“Sit tight,” he said. “This won’t take long.”
He walked over and picked up Nakai’s Steyr Aug. He had no good reason for taking it, other than to gain a little experience with the Austrian firearm. Having carried an M4 in combat, he preferred it over any other rifle, but Mason wasn’t above learning to use new weapons. Besides, he had always lived by the motto that one gun was enough, but two were better. The Aug would make a fine backup rifle, and it used the same 5.56 mm ammunition as his M4.
He checked several of the HMMWVs, retrieving both water and fuel. He took only the regular gasoline, leaving behind several jerry cans filled with diesel fuel. He also found a pair of Steiner M22 binoculars, which he stuffed in his glove box. Next, he took two ammo cans filled with NATO M855 steel-tipped 5.56 mm ammunition and a third packed full of Federal Hydra-Shok .45 ammunition. It was no surprise that the mercenaries carried some pretty deadly hardware.
He stared up at the .50 caliber machine gun mounted atop the lead HMMWV.
“I wonder,” he mused, climbing up to check it out.
The weapon was attached to the hardtop using a standard M36 ring mount. The gun sat on a roller carriage that swung freely around a circular track, enabling it to fire in any direction. Equipping his F150 with the same ring would require modifications worthy of the experts at the Gas Monkey Garage. And without some way to steady the weapon, it was all but useless.
He searched the HMMWV’s cargo area and almost whooped with joy when he found an M3 tripod folded up in the back. The M3 was a versatile ground mount with telescoping legs, and a traversing and elevating mechanism that enabled the operator to dial in shots when visibility was limited or when shooting at long range. He hauled the forty-four-pound tripod over to his truck and set it in the bed. Then he turned back and looked over at the Browning machine gun. Removing the eighty-four-pound weapon from a mount six feet off the ground was not going to be easy.
He started by unloading it and removing the pin that secured it to the ring mount. The weight of the gun made it impossible for him to simply hoist it up onto a shoulder. Instead, he climbed out onto the hood of the HMMWV and carefully lifted the weapon off the mount. He slid it down the windshield and lowered it to the hood as gently as his back would allow. Then he jumped down to the ground and got a good grip on it. Getting the gun from the hood of the HMMWV to the bed of his truck was more straightforward, and the whole transfer only took about four minutes.
He took all the .50 BMG ammunition that he could find—six cans in total, each containing 100 rounds and weighing thirty-five pounds apiece. By the time he was finished, he had added more than three hundred pounds of gear to his truck’s payload. Still, he thought, having an M2 in the back might very well come in handy one day.
Unable to resist the temptation to see how well it worked, he cleared space in the bed of his truck, set up the tripod, and lifted the machine gun into place. He secured the pintel and inspected his handiwork. The weapon was enormous, measuring more than five feet in length. He set an ammo can next to the gun and loaded it exactly as he had done earlier in the day. Lowering the tailgate, he swung the weapon around to face one of the tractor-trailers. He pressed the butterfly triggers, and a burst of six slugs tore ragged holes through the side of the truck.
Bowie poked his head through the cab window and started barking.
“It’s all right, boy,” Mason said, leaning over and patting him on the neck. “I’m done.”
He tied down the barrel with a bungee cord and draped a canvas tarp over the weapon. It was ready for use, should the need ever arise.
Mason looked over at the six tractor-trailers. He couldn’t in good conscience leave them behind for a militia to find. The worst of the infected seemed incapable of operating firearms, but there were still plenty of dangerous men who could wreak havoc with an arsenal of automatic weapons.
He pulled his truck down the interstate a few hundred feet and climbed out again. Bowie started to ease out of the truck, but Mason stopped him.
“Sit tight. It’s going to get hot.”
He gathered up a few rags, soaked them in gasoline, and went from one tractor-trailer to the next, stuffing them in the gas tanks. Then he hurried down the line, lighting them one at a time. Unlike Hollywood movies, the vehicles didn’t explode. Instead, the tanks made loud puff sounds as the gasoline ignited. The fires slowly spread, starting first with the cabs and then moving back to the cargos. Tires melted, metal warped, and windshields burst as the flames took hold.
Bowie seemed fascinated by the fire, staring out through the windshield with wide eyes and occasionally sounding off with a short woof. Mason watched to make sure that every tractor-trailer burned completely, leaving nothing serviceable behind. When he was satisfied, he started up his truck and put it in gear.
Bowie turned to him with excitement in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s time to go home.”
The most direct route back to Boone was to follow I-95 as far as I-26 and then turn north toward Columbia. Caution, however, dictated taking a slightly more circuitous route, first skirting Savannah, and then following the much smaller Highway 321 all the way up. The only point at which Mason thought he might have to detour off the highway was near Columbia, but he wouldn’t know that until he saw the condition of the roads.
The first thirty miles passed without incident. The drive was so quiet, in fact, that Mason began to think that the trip home might be entirely uneventful. It was only as he entered the outskirts of Hardeeville, South Carolina, that things took a surprising turn.
As he carefully steered around an overturned school bus, he saw a large shape lying up ahead in the road. A pack of feral dogs was circling and biting at it. At first, Mason thought it might be a bloated cadaver of some type, but as he got closer, he saw that it was actually a large black horse. The animal struggled to get up, but both its back legs were badly chewed and unable to support its weight. The dogs were relentless, biting at its neck, legs, and face.
Mason hit the brakes hard, grabbed his M4, and jumped out of the truck. He brought t
he weapon to his shoulder and fired a shot over the animals’ heads. The dogs scattered, and Bowie leapt from the truck, chasing after them. Mason whistled, and Bowie stopped and looked back over his shoulder with a pleading in his eyes to let him give chase.
“Oh, go on,” he said.
Bowie raced after the dogs, barking wildly.
Mason slowly approached the injured horse. The poor creature was in terrible pain. Its body was covered in a white foamy sweat from nearly running itself to death. Worse yet were the puncture bites and ripped flesh covering the animal’s legs and face. It tried to raise its head and sit up, but simply didn’t have the strength. It would die, of that Mason was certain, but death would not come quickly. He squatted down and patted the horse on its thick neck, and when he did, the animal laid its head back on the pavement.
“I’m afraid this is the end of the line,” he said, stroking the beautiful creature.
It stared up at him with a huge dark eye, strangely peaceful for being in such awful pain.
Mason slowly stood back up and raised his rifle, accepting that it was his responsibility to end the animal’s suffering. He placed the muzzle perpendicular to its forehead, aiming for the intersection of an imaginary line that that went from each eye to the opposite ear. The horse lay still, looking up at him, as if resolved to its fate. Mason nodded his farewell and pulled the trigger. The shot was true, and the animal no longer moved. He squatted back down and gently pushed on the cornea of one of its eyes. The horse didn’t blink. It was dead.
That was when Mason noticed a second bullet wound, this one behind the horse’s front leg. He pressed a finger into the hole. By the size of it, he thought it was probably a 30.06, which helped to explain how the dogs had been able to bring down such a strong animal.
He stood up and stared down at the horse for a long time. It was a gorgeous creature, and why anyone would shoot it was beyond him. The only explanation was that someone had shot it for food. The bullet must have missed anything vital, and it had managed to run off—a shame for both the horse and the hunter.
Bowie came trotting back up, his head held high.
“Did you give it to ’em, boy?”
Bowie walked over and sniffed the horse. He circled it once and then went over and stood quietly by the truck, as if waiting for Mason to say his final goodbyes.
Mason took one last look at the horse, shook his head, and headed back to his truck.
Three miles up the road, Mason could hardly believe his eyes. There in the middle of the lane was a second horse. This one was very much dead. Fortunately, the dogs had yet to find it. He pulled up alongside the animal and studied it from his window. It was a brown and white Quarter Horse, probably no more than a couple of years old. The only signs of injury were two bullet holes, one through its neck and the other through a hindquarter. A huge pool of blood lay under the animal.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, clenching his teeth. This wasn’t about hunting at all.
The crack of a gunshot sounded from further up the interstate. Then another.
Mason sped ahead, driving as fast as he dared. After about half a mile, he saw them—two men in a bright red Dodge Ram pickup. One man drove while the second rode in the bed, leaning over the roof of the cab with a rifle in his hands. They were weaving through cars, trying to get off another shot at a horse galloping down the median.
Mason pressed hard on his horn, and both men spun around to see who was closing in on them. After a few seconds, they gave up the chase and swung to a stop in the middle of the road. The man standing in back turned and hopped down from the bed, hunting rifle in hand. The other man climbed out of the cab, apparently unarmed.
Mason stopped about fifty yards behind them, turning his truck at a slight angle in case he had to take cover behind the engine compartment. Bowie tried to press by him to get at them, but Mason held him back.
“Stay with me,” he said, looking into the dog’s eyes.
Bowie hopped down and looked back at him, whining impatiently.
The two men were already approaching fast. The one with the rifle was easily six-foot-three and sported long blonde hair, reminding Mason of the Italian fashion model, Fabio. The other was a few inches shorter and walked with a slight limp as he hurried to keep up.
Mason stepped around to the front corner of his truck and waited for them. They reminded him of college baseball players, strong and youthful, filled with an almost playful energy. Young men out having fun, he thought. But that in no way gave them a pass for what they were doing.
“What the hell, mister!” shouted Fabio.
“Hold it right there,” Mason said, sliding his jacket open and placing his hand on the butt of the Supergrade.
“What are you, some kind of undercover cop?”
“I’m Deputy Marshal Mason Raines. And you are?”
“I’m none of your goddamn business,” he said, forcing a confident smile. “And that’s my boyfriend, Jeremy.”
Jeremy’s face tightened. “Knock it off.”
Fabio reached over and pushed him.
“Or what?”
Jeremy looked to the ground.
“Just quit saying stuff like that. It ain’t nice.”
Fabio took a step toward Mason.
“I’ll tell you what isn’t nice,” he said. “It’s the marshal here going and honking at us like that. We’ll probably never catch up to that damn pony now.”
Mason tried to keep his temper in check. He reminded himself that they were killing animals, not people. It helped, but only a little.
“You got something against horses?”
“No,” Fabio said, making an exaggerated face. “How could I have anything but love for those giant sacks of shit?”
Mason shook his head, sensing that things were quickly heading toward violence.
“Let me ask you something, Marshal. You ever shoveled horse shit? No? Well, I have. Hundreds of pounds of that green stinky crap.”
“You sound like an expert.”
Fabio tipped his head forward as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Are you insulting me, Marshal?”
“Not at all. I’m glad that a fellow like you could find gainful employment.”
Fabio’s eyes narrowed, and he gripped his rifle.
“The horses aren’t your property. We let them go from a riding school east of Hardeeville. I figure that, since we let them go, we can do damn well whatever we please to them.”
“Is that how you figure it?”
“You see it different?”
“I do.”
Sensing the growing tension, Bowie began to move sideways around the men, growling.
Jeremy stepped forward and pulled at Fabio’s arm.
“There ain’t no call for this,” he pleaded. “Shooting the horses was dumb if you really think about it.”
Fabio jerked his arm free.
“Get your hands off me.”
“You should listen to him,” Mason said in a firm voice.
“Or what?”
Mason didn’t answer.
“Maybe we should chase you down the highway a bit. See if you fare any better than the horses. I’ve never hunted a man before.”
Mason gave him a cold smile.
“I have. Plenty of times. And believe me, it’s a hell of a lot different than running down a horse.”
That seemed to give Fabio pause, but only for a moment.
“You don’t have any jurisdiction here.”
“Wrong. The Marshal Service is a federal law enforcement agency. And even if it wasn’t, common law allows any citizen to stop another from committing a violent crime.” He looked over at Jeremy. “You sure you want to be a part of this?”
“Not me, Marshal,” blurted Jeremy. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law. Not once.”
Fabio looked over at him and shook his head.
“You’ve go
t to be the biggest pussy to ever survive an apocalypse.”
Jeremy looked at the ground again and started to back away.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But my momma wouldn’t want me dying over some stupid horses.”
Bowie kept pace with Jeremy, advancing for every step he retreated.
Fabio looked at Mason and shrugged.
“I guess it’s just us men.”
Mason shook his head.
“Not hardly. Men don’t shoot defenseless animals for fun. You’re still a boy.”
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